
PRESENTEn BY /y/c^ 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 
OF THE RENAISSANCE 




THE ADMIRABLE CRICHTON 
From an engraving by J. Hall after Moses Griffith 
Travelled in 1577, at the age of seventeen, and won the admiration of foreigners by his 
wit and swordsmanship 



English Travellers of the 
Renaissance 



BY 

CLARE HOWARD 



Submitted in partial fulfillment of 
the requirements for the degree of 
Doctor of Philosophy, in the Faculty 
of Philosophy, Columbia University. 



NEW YORK 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 
OF THE RENAISSANCE 
BY CLARE HOWARD 



LONDON : JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD 
NEW YORK : JOHN LANE COMPANY 
TORONTO : BELL & COCKBURN MCMXIV 






Gut 

fES is (3(4 



TumbuU &' Spears, Printers^ Edinburgh 



PREFACE 

THIS essay was written in 1 908-1 910 
while I was studying at Oxford as 
Fellow of the Society of American 
Women in London. Material on the subject of 
travel in any century is apparently inexhaustible, 
and one could write many books on the subject 
without duplicating sources. The following aims 
no further than to describe one phase of Renais- 
sance travel in clear and sharp outline, with 
sufficient illustration to embellish but not to clog 
the main ideas. 

In the preparation of this book I incurred many 
debts of gratitude. I would thank the staff of 
the Bodleian, especially Mr W. H. B. Somerset, 
for their kindness during the two years I was 
working in the library of Oxford University ; and 
Dr Perlbach, Abteilungsdirektor of the Konigliche 
Bibliothek at Berlin, who forwarded to me some 
helpful information concerning the early German 
books of instructions for travellers ; and Professor 
Clark S. Northup, of Cornell University, for 
similar aid. To Mr George Whale I am 
indebted for the use of his transcript of Sloane 



PREFACE 

MS. 1 8 13, and to my friend Miss M. E. 
Marshall, of the Board of Trade, for the generous 
gift of her leisure hours in reading for me in the 
British Museum after the sea had divided me 
from that treasure-house of information. 

I would like to acknowledge with thanks the 
kind advice of Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Sidney- 
Lee, whose generosity in giving time and scholar- 
ship many students besides myself are in a position 
to appreciate. Mr L. Pearsall Smith, from whose 
work on the Life and Letters of Sir Henry 
Wotton I have drawn copiously, gave me also 
courteous personal assistance. 

To the Faculty of the English Department at 
Columbia University I owe the gratitude of one 
who has received her earliest inclination to scholar- 
ship from their teachings. I am under heavy 
obligations to Professor A. H. Thorndike and 
Professor G. P. Krapp for their corrections and 
suggestions in the proof-sheets of this book, and 
to Professor W. P. Trent for continued help and 
encouragement throughout my studies at Columbia 
and elsewhere. 

Above all, I wish to emphasize the aid of 
Professor C. H. Firth, of Oxford University, 
vi 



PREFACE 

whose sympathy and comprehension of the diffi- 
culties of a beginner in the field he so nobly 
commands can be understood only by those, like 
myself, who come to Oxford aspiring and alone. 
I wish this essay were a more worthy result of 
his influence. 

CLARE HOWARD 



Barnard College, New York 
October 19 1 3 



Vll 



INTRODUCTION 

AMONG the many didactic books which 
flooded England in the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries were certain 
essays on travel. Some of these have never been 
brought to light since their publication more than 
three hundred years ago, or been mentioned by 
the few writers who have interested themselves in 
the literature of this subject. In the collections of 
voyages andf explorations, so often garnered, these 
have found^no place. Most of them are very rare, 
and have never been reprinted. Yet they do not 
deserve to be thus overlooked, and in several ways 
this survey of them will, I think, be useful for 
students of literature. 

They reveal a widespread custom among 
Elizabethan and Jacobean gentlemen, of com- 
pleting their education by travel. There are 
scattered allusions to this practice, in contemporary 
social documents : Anthony a Wood frequently 
explains how such an Oxonian " travelled beyond 
seas and returned a compleat Person," — but no- 
where is this ideal of a cosmopolitan education so 
explicitly set forth as it is in these essays. 
Addressed to the intending tourist, they are in no 
sense to be confused with guide-books or itineraries. 

ix 



INTRODUCTION 

They are discussions of the benefits of travel, 
admonitions and warnings, arranged to put the 
traveller in the proper attitude of mind towards 
his great task of self-development. Taken in 
chronological order they outline for us the life of 
the travelling student. 

Beginning with the end of the sixteenth century 
when travel became the fashion, as the only means 
of acquiring modern languages and modern history, 
as well as those physical accomplishments and 
social graces by which a young man won his way 
at Court, they trace his evolution up to the time 
when it had no longer any serious motive ; that 
is, when the chairs of modern history and modern 
languages were founded at the English universities, 
and when, with the fall of the Stuarts, the Court 
ceased to be the arbiter of men's fortunes. In the 
course of this evolution they show us many phases 
of continental influence in England ; how Italian 
immorality infected young imaginations, how the 
Jesuits won travellers to their religion, how France 
became the model of deportment, what were the 
origins of the Grand Tour, and so forth. 

That these directions for travel were not isolated 
oddities of literature, but were the expression of a 
widespread ideal of the English gentry, I have 
tried to show in the following study. The essays 
can hardly be appreciated without support from 



INTRODUCTION 

biography and history, and for that reason I have 
introduced some concrete illustrations of the sort of 
traveller to vv^hom the books were addressed. If I 
have not always quoted the " Instructions " fully, 
it is because they repeat one another on some 
points. My plan has been to comment on what- 
ever in each book was new, or showed the evolu- 
tion of travel for study's sake. 

The result, I hope, will serve to show something 
of the cosmopolitanism of English society in the 
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ; of the closer 
contact which held between England and the 
Continent, while England was not yet great and 
self-sufficient ; of times when her soldiers of low 
and high degree went to seek their fortunes in the 
Low Countries, and her merchants journeyed in 
person to conduct business with Italy ; when a 
steady stream of Roman Catholics and exiles for 
political reasons trooped to France or Flanders for 
years together. 

These discussions of the art of travel are relics 
of an age when Englishmen, next to the Germans, 
were known for the greatest travellers among all 
nations. In the same boat-load with merchants, 
spies, exiles, and diplomats from England sailed 
the young gentleman fresh from his university, to 
complete his education by a look at the most 
civilized countries of the world. He approached 

xi 



INTRODUCTION 

the Continent with an inquiring, open mind, eager 
to learn, quick to imitate the refinements and ideas 
of countries older than his own. For the same 
purpose that now takes American students to 
England, or Japanese students to America, the 
English striplings once journeyed to France, com- 
paring governments and manners, watching every- 
thing, noting everything, and coming home to 
benefit their country by new ideas. 

I hope, also, that a review of these forgotten 
volumes may lend an added pleasure to the reading 
of books greater than themselves in Elizabethan 
literature. One cannot fully appreciate the satire 
of Amorphus's claim to be " so sublimated and 
refined by travel," and to have " drunk in the 
spirit of beauty in some eight score and eighteen 
princes' courts where I have resided," ^ unless 
one has read of the benefits of travel as expounded 
by the current Instructions for Travellers ; nor the 
dialogues between Sir Politick- Would-be and Pere- 
grine in Volpone^ or the Fox. Shakespeare, too, in 
The Two Gentlemen of Verona^ has taken bodily 
the arguments of the Elizabethan orations in 
praise of travel : 

" Some to the warres, to try their fortune there ; 
Some, to discover Islands farre away ; 
Some, to the studious Universities ; 

1 Ben Jonson, Cynthia! s Revels, Act i. Sc. I. 

xii 



INTRODUCTION 

For any, or for all these exercises, 

He said, thou Proteus, your sonne was meet ; 

And did request me, to importune you 

To let him spend his time no more at home ; 

Which would be great impeachment to his age. 

In having knowne no travaile in his youth. 

(Antonio) Nor need'st thou much importune me to that 

Whereon, this month I have been hamering, 

I have considered well, his losse of time, 

And how he cannot be a perfect man. 

Not being tryed, and tutored in the world ; 

Experience is by industry atchiev'd. 

And perfected by the swift course of time." 

(Act I. Sc. iii.) 



Xlll 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I 



PAGE 



The Beginnings of Travel for Culture . . 3 

Pilgrimages at the close of the Middle Ages — New 
objects for travel in the fifteenth century — Humanism — 
Diplomatic ambition — Linguistic acquirement. 



CHAPTER II 

The High Purpose of the Elizabethan Traveller 20 

Developmentof the individual — Benefit to the Common- 
wealth — First books addressed to travellers. 



CHAPTER III 

Some Cynical Aspersions upon the Benefits of 

Travel ........ 50 

The Italianate Englishman. 

CHAPTER IV 

Perils for Protestant Travellers ... 72 

The Inquisition — The Jesuits — Penalties of recusancy. 

CHAPTER V 

The Influence of the French Academies . loi 

France the arbiter of manners in the seventeenth 
century — Riding the great horse — Attempts to establish 
academies in England — Why travellers neglected Spain. 
b XV 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER VI 



PAGE 



The Grand Tour ....... 141 

Origin of the term — Governors for young travellers — 
Expenses of travel, 

CHAPTER VII 

The Decadence of the Grand Tour . . 178 

The decline of the courtier — Foundation of chairs of 
Modern History and Modern Languages at Oxford and 
Cambridge — Englishmen become self-sufficient — Books 
of travel become common — Advent of the Romantic 
traveller who travels for scenery. 

Bibliography ....... 205 

Index . . 227 



XVI 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

The Admirable Crichton .... Frontispiece 

From an envra-uinv by J. Hall, after Moses Griffith 

facing page 

Edward De Vere, Seventeenth Earl of Oxford . i6 

From an en^ra-ving by J. Brozvn, after G. P, Harding 

Francis Manners, Sixth Earl of Rutland . . 38 
Dudley North, Third Baron North ... 48 

From a print of an original picture in the collection »f the Earl of Guildford 

John Harington, Second Baron Harington of 

EXTON ........ 80 

Fencing . . . . . . . . .104 

Dancing ......... 114 

An illustration from " Niiov: Inventione di Balli" an Italian book of 
instructions in dancinrr much prized by James I, 

Sketching on the Shores of Lake Avernus in 

1610 134 

Tennis as played in Paris in 1632 . . . 144 

Sir Thomas Killigrew . . . , .164 

From a contemporarii caricature 

Riding the Great Horse, as taught by Antoine 

Pluvinel, the Riding-Master of Louis XIIL . 186 

From " Le Maneige Royal " by Antoine Pluvinel, 1624 

An Eruption of Mount Vesuvius . . .194 

xvii 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 
OF THE RENAISSANCE 



Chapter I 

THE BEGINNINGS OF TRAVEL FOR 
CULTURE 

OF the many social impulses that were 
influenced by the Renaissance, by that 
" new lernynge which runnythe all the 
world over now-a-days," the love of travel 
received a notable modification. This very old 
instinct to go far, far away had in the Middle 
Ages found sanction, dignity and justification in 
the performance of pilgrimages. It is open to 
doubt whether the number of the truly pious 
would ever have filled so many ships to Port 
Jaffa had not their ranks been swelled by the 
restless, the adventurous, the wanderers of all 
classes. 

Towards the sixteenth century, when curiosity 
about things human was an ever stronger under- 
current in England, pilgrimages were particularly 
popular. In 1434, Henry VI. granted licences 
to 2433 pilgrims to the shrine of St James of 
Compostella alone.^ The numbers were so large 
that the control of their transportation became a 
coveted business enterprise. " Pilgrims at this 
time were really an article of exportation," says 

1 Ellis, Original Letters, 2nd Series, i. i lo, note. 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

Sir Henry Ellis, in commenting on a letter of the 
Earl of Oxford to Henry VI., asking for a licence 
for a ship of which he was owner, to carry 
pilgrims. " Ships were every year loaded from 
different ports with cargoes of these deluded 
wanderers, who carried with them large sums of 
money to defray the expenses of their journey." ^ 

Among the earliest books printed in England 
was Informacon for Pylgrymes unto the Holy 
Londe^ by Wynkin de Worde, one which ran to 
three editions,^ an almost exact copy of William 
Wey's " prevysyoun " (provision) for a journey 
eastwards.^ The tone and content of this Infor- 
macon differ very little from the later Directions 
for Travellers which are the subject of our study. 
The advice given shows that the ordinary pilgrim 
thought, not of the ascetic advantages of the 
voyage, or of simply arriving in safety at his 
holy destination, but of making the trip in the 
highest possible degree of personal comfort and 
pleasure. He is advised to take with him two 
barrels of wine (" For yf ye wolde geve xx 
dukates for a barrel ye shall none have after that 
ye passe moche Venyse ") ; to buy orange-ginger, 
almonds, rice, figs, cloves, maces and loaf sugar 

1 Ellis, Original Letters, 2nd Series, i. no, note. 

2 In c. 1498, 1 5 15, and 1524. 

3 Itineraries of William Wey, Printed for the Roxburghe Club from 
the original MS. in the Bodleian Library, 1857, pp. 153-154. 

4 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

also, to eke out the fare the ship will provide. 
And this although he is to make the patron swear, 
before the pilgrim sets foot in the galley, that he 
will serve " hote meete twice at two meals a day." 
He whom we are wont to think of as a poor 
wanderer, with no possessions but his grey cloak 
and his staff, is warned not to embark for the 
Holy Land without carrying with him " a lytell 
cawdron, a fryenge panne, dysshes, platers, cuppes 
of glasse ... a fether bed, a matrasse, a pylawe, 
two payre sheets and a quylte" ... a cage for 
half a dozen of hens or chickens to have with you 
in the ship, and finally, half a bushel of " myle 
sede" to feed the chickens. Far from being 
encouraged to exercise a humble and abnegatory 
spirit on the voyage, he is to be at pains to secure 
a berth in the middle of the ship, and not to mind 
paying fifty ducats for to be in a good honest 
place, " to have your ease in the galey and also to 
be cherysshed." Still more unchristian are the in- 
junctions to run ahead of one's fellows, on landing, 
in order to get the best quarters at the inn, and 
first turn at the dinner provided ; and above all, 
at Port Jaffa, to secure the best ass, " for ye 
shall paye no more for the best than for the 
worste." 

But while this book was being published, new 
forces were at hand which were to strip the thin 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

disguise of piety from pilgrims of this sort. The 
Colloquies of Erasmus appeared before the third 
edition of Informacon for Pylgrymes^ and exploded 
the idea that it was the height of piety to have 
seen Jerusalem. It was nothing but the love of 
change, Erasmus declared, that made old bishops 
run over huge spaces of sea and land to reach 
Jerusalem. The noblemen who flocked thither 
had better be looking after their estates, and 
married men after their wives. Young men and 
women travelled " non sine gravi discrimine morum 
et integritatis." Pilgrimages were a dissipation. 
Some people went again and again and did 
nothing else all their lives long.^ The only satis- 
faction they looked for or received was entertain- 
ment to themselves and their friends by their 
remarkable adventures, and ability to shine at 
dinner-tables by recounting their travels.^ There 
was no harm in going sometimes, but it was not 
pious. And people could spend their time, money 
and pains on something which was truly pious.^ 

It was only a few years after this that that 
pupil of Erasmus and his friends, King Henry the 
Eighth, who startled Europe by the way he not 
only received new ideas but acted upon them, 

1 Familiarlum Colloquiorum Opus. Basilese, 1542. De utilUate collo- 
quiorum, ad lector em. 

2 Ibid. De voiis temere susceptis, fol. 15. 
^ Ibid. Ad lee tor em. 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

swept away the shrines, burned our Lady of 
Walsingham and prosecuted " the holy bhsful 
martyr" Thomas a Becket for fraudulent pre- 
tensions.^ 

But a new object for travel was springing up 
and filling the leading minds of the sixteenth 
century — the desire of learning, at first hand, the 
best that was being thought and said in the world. 
Humanism was the new power, the new channel 
into which men were turning in the days when 
" our naturell, yong, lusty and coragious prynce 
and sovrayne lord King Herre the Eighth entered 
into the flower of pleasaunt youthe." ^ And as 
the scientific spirit or the socialistic spirit can give 
to the permanent instincts of the world a new zest, 
so the Renaissance passion for self-expansion and 
for education gave to the old road a new mirage. 

All through the fifteenth century the universities 
of Italy, pre-eminent since their foundation for 
secular studies, had been gaining reputation by 
their off^er of a wider education than the threadbare 
discussions of the schoolmen. The discovery and 
revival in the fifteenth century of Greek literature, 
which had stirred Italian society so profoundly, 
gave to the universities a northward-spreading 
fame. Northern scholars, like Rudolf Agricola, 

^ Lord Campbell, Lives of the Lord Chancellors, i. 95. 
*G. Cavendish, Life of Wolsey. Kelmscott Press, 1893. 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

hurried south to find congenial air at the centre 
of intellectual life. That professional humanists 
could not do without the stamp of true culture 
which an Italian degree gave to them, Erasmus, 
observer of all things, notes in the year 1500 to 
the Lady of Veer : 

" Two things, I feel, are very necessary : one 
that I go to Italy, to gain for my poor learning 
some authority from the celebrity of the place; 
the other, that I take the degree of Doctor ; both 
senseless, to be sure. For people do not straight- 
way change their minds because they cross the 
sea, as Horace says, nor will the shadow of an 
impressive name make me a whit more learned. . . 
but we must put on the lion's skin to prove our 
ability to those who judge a man by his title and 
not by his books, which in truth they do not 
understand." ^ 

Although Erasmus despised degree-hunting, it 
is well known that he felt the power of Italy. 
He was tempted to remain in Rome for ever, by 
reason of the company he found there. " What a 
sky and fields, what libraries and pleasant walks 
and sweet confabulation with the learned . , . " ^ 

1 Opera (MDCCIIL), Tom. iii., Ep. xcii. (Annae Bersalae, 
Principi Verianae). 

2 " Quid caelum, quos agros, quas bibliothecas, quas ambulationes, 
quam mellitas eruditorum hominum confabulationes, quot mundi lumina 
. . . reliquerim." Ep. cxxxvi. 

8 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

he exclaims, in afterwards recalling that paradise 
of scholars. There was, for instance, the Cardinal 
Grimani, who begged Erasmus to share his life . . . 
and books.^ And there was Aldus Manutius. We 
get a glimpse of the Venetian printing-house when 
Aldus and Erasmus worked together : Erasmus 
sitting writing regardless of the noise of printers, 
while Aldus breathlessly reads proof, admiring 
every word. " We were so busy," says Erasmus, 
" we scarce had time to scratch our ears." ^ 

It was this charm of intellectual companionship 
which started the whole stream of travel animi causa. 
Whoever had keen wits, an agile mind, imagina- 
tion, yearned for Italy. There enlightened spirits 
struck sparks from one another. Young and 
ardent minds in England and in Germany found 
an escape from the dull and melancholy grimness 
of their uneducated elders — purely practical fight- 
ing-men, whose ideals were fixed on a petrified 
code of life. 

I need not explain how Englishmen first felt 
this charm of urbane civilization. The travels 
of Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, of Gunthorpe, 
Flemming, Grey and Free, have been recently 
described by Mr Einstein in The Italian Renais- 
sance in England. As for Italian journeys of 

1 Ep. mclxxv. 

2 Opera (MDCCIII.) Tom. ix. 1137. 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

Selling, Grocyn, Latimer, Tunstall, Colet and 
Lily, of that extraordinary group of scholars who 
transformed Oxford by the introduction of Greek 
ideals and gave to it the peculiar distinction which 
is still shining, I mention them only to suggest 
that they are the source of the Renaissance respect 
for a foreign education, and the founders of the 
fashion which, in its popular spreadings, we will 
attempt to trace. They all studied in Italy, and 
brought home nothing but good. For to scholar- 
ship they joined a native force of character which 
gave a most felicitous introduction to England 
of the fine things of the mind which they brought 
home with them. By their example they gave 
an impetus to travel for education's sake which 
lesser men could never have done. 

Though through Grocyn, Linacre and Tun- 
stall, Greek was better taught in England than 
in Italy, according to Erasmus,^ at the time Henry 
VIII. came to the throne, the idea of Italy as 
the goal of scholars persisted. Rich churchmen, 
patrons of letters, launched promising students on 
to the Continent to give them a complete educa- 
tion ; as Richard Fox, Founder of Corpus Christi, 
sent Edward Wotton to Padua, " to improve his 
learning and chiefly to learn Greek," ^ or Thomas 

1 Ep. ccclxiii. 

2 Letters and Papers of Henry VIII., vol. iv., Part I., No. 4. 

10 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

Langton, Bishop of Winchester, supported Richard 
Pace at the same university.^ To Reginald Pole, 
the scholar's life in Italy made so strong an appeal 
that he could never be reclaimed by Henry VIII. 
Shunning all implication in the tumult of the 
political world, he slipped back to Padua, and 
there surrounded himself with friends, — " singular 
fellows, such as ever absented themselves from 
the court, desiring to live holily." ^ To his 
household at Padua gravitated other English 
students fond of " good company and the 
love of learned men " ; Thomas Lupset,^ the 
confidant of Erasmus and Richard Pace ; Thomas 
Winter,* Wolsey's reputed natural son ; Thomas 
Starkey,^ the historian ; George Lily,^ son of the 
grammarian ; Michael Throgmorton, and Richard 
Morison,^ ambassador-to-be. 

There were other elements that contributed to 
the growth of travel besides the desire to become 
exquisitely learned. The ambition of Henry 

^ Richard Pace, De Fructu qui ex Doctr'tna PercipUur (15 17), 
p. 27. 

^ Ellis, Original Letters, 2nd Series, vol. i. 65, Archbishop Cranmer 
to Henry VIII. 

•5 Becatelli, Vita Reginaldi Poll. Latin version of Andreas 
Dudithius, Venetiis, 1558. 

4 MS. Cotton, Nero, B. f. 118. 

5 Ellis, Original Letters, 2nd Series, vol. i. 54. 
® Wood's AthentE Oxonienses, ed. Bliss. 

' Letters and Papers of Henry VIIL, vol. ix.. No. lOi. 

I I 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

VIII. to be a power in European politics opened 
the liveliest intercourse with the Continent. It 
was soon found that a special combination of 
qualities was needed in the ambassadors to carry- 
out his aspirations. Churchmen, like the un- 
grateful Pole, for whose education he had gener- 
ously subscribed, were often unpliable to his views 
of the Pope ; a good old English gentleman, 
though devoted, might be like Sir Robert Wing- 
field, simple, unsophisticated, and the laughing- 
stock of foreigners.^ A courtier, such as Lord 
Rochford, who could play tennis, make verses, 
and become "intime" at the court of Francis I., 
could not hold his own in disputes of papal 
authority with highly educated ecclesiastics."^ 
Hence it came about that the choice of an 
ambassador fell more and more upon men of 
sound education who also knew something of 
foreign countries : such as Sir Thomas Wyatt, or 
Sir Richard Wingfield, of Cambridge and Gray's 
Inn, who had studied at Ferrara ^ ; Sir Nicholas 
Wotton, who had lived in Perugia, and graduated 
doctor of civil and canon law"^; or Anthony St 
Lieger, who, according to Lloyd, " when twelve 

1 J. S. Brewer, Reign of Henry VIII., vol. i. 117-147. 

2 Bapst, Edmond, Deux GenUlshommes-Poetes de la cour de 
Henry VIII., Paris, 1 891, pp. 26, 60. 

3 Letters and Papers of Henry VIII., vol. ii., Part I., No. 2149. 
* Ibid., vol. xi., No. 60; vol. xv., No. 581. 

12 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

years of age was sent for his grammar learning 
with his tutor into France, for his carriage into 
Italy, for his philosophy to Cambridge, for his 
law to Gray's Inn : and for that which completed 
all, the government of himself, to court ; where 
his debonairness and freedom took with the king, 
as his solidity and wisdom with the Cardinal." ^ 
Sometimes Henry was even at pains to pick out 
and send abroad promising university students 
with a view to training them especially for 
diplomacy. On one of his visits to Oxford he 
was impressed with the comely presence and 
flowing expression of John Mason, who, though 
the son of a cowherd, was notable at the uni- 
versity for his " polite and majestick speaking." 

King Henry disposed of him in foreign parts, 
to add practical experience to his speculative 
studies, and paid for his education out of the king's 
Privy Purse, as we see by the royal expenses for Sep- 
tember 1530. Among such items as ";^8, i8s. to 
Hanybell Zinzano, for drinks and other medicines 
for the King's Horses " ; and, " 20s. to the fellow 
with the dancing dog," is the entry of " a year's 
exhibition to Mason, the King's scholar at Paris, 
;^3, 6s. 8d."^ 

Another educational investment of the King's 



1 D. Lloyd, State Worthies^ vol, i. 1 05. 

2 Letters and Papers of Henry VIII., vol. v. p. 751. 



13 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

was Thomas Smith, afterwards as excellent an 
ambassador as Mason, whom he supported at 
Cambridge, and according to Camden, at riper 
years made choice of to be sent into Italy. " For 
even till our days," says Camden under the year 
1577, "certain young men of promising hopes, 
out of both Universities, have been maintained in 
foreign countries, at the King's charge, for the 
more complete polishing of their Parts and 
Studies." ^ The diplomatic career thus opened to 
young courtiers, if they proved themselves fit for 
service by experience in foreign countries, was 
therefore as strong a motive for travel as the 
desire to reach the source of humanism. 

This again merged into the pursuit of a still 
more informal education — the sort which comes 
from "seeing the world." The marriage of 
Mary Tudor to Louis XII., and later the subtle 
bond of humanism and high spirits which existed 
between Francis I. and his " very dear and well- 
beloved good brother, cousin and gossip, perpetual 
ally and perfect friend," Henry the Eighth, led a 
good many of Henry's courtiers to attend the 
French court at one time or another — particularly 
the most dashing favourites, and leaders of fashion, 
the "friskers," as Andrew Boorde calls them,^ 

^ Camden, History of England, 

2 In the First Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge, 1547. 

14 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

such as Charles Brandon, George Boleyn, Francis 
Bryan, Nicholas Carew, or Henry Fitzroy. 
With any ambassador went a bevy of young 
gentlemen, who on their return diffused a certain 
mysterious sophistication which was the envy of 
home-keeping youth. According to Hall, when 
they came back to England they were " all French 
in eating and drinking and apparel, yea, and in 
the French vices and brags : so that all the estates 
of England were by them laughed at, the ladies 
and gentlewomen were dispraised, and nothing by 
them was praised, but if it were after the French 
turn." ^ From this time on young courtiers 
pressed into the train of an ambassador in order 
to see the world and become like Ann Boleyn's 
captivating brother, or Elizabeth's favourite, the 
Earl of Oxford, or whatever gallant was con- 
spicuous at court for foreign graces. 

There was still another contributory element to 
the growth of travel, one which touched diplomats, 
scholars, and courtiers — the necessity of learning 
modern languages. By the middle of the six- 
teenth century Latin was no longer sufficient for 
intercourse between educated people. In the most 
civilized countries the vernacular had been elevated 
to the dignity of the classical tongues by being 
made the literary vehicle of such poets as Politian 

1 Hall's Life of Henry VIII.^ ed. Whibley, 1904, vol. i. 175. 

15 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

and Bembo, Ronsard and Du Bellay. A ver- 
nacular literature of great beauty, too important 
to be overlooked, began to spring up on all sides. 
One could no longer keep abreast of the best 
thought without a knowledge of modern languages. 
More powerful than any academic leanings was 
the Renaissance curiosity about man, which could 
not be satisfied through the knowledge of Latin 
only. Hardly anyone but churchmen talked 
Latin in familiar conversation with one. When 
a man visited foreign courts and wished to enter 
into social intercourse with ladies and fashion- 
ables, or move freely among soldiers, or settle a 
bill with an inn-keeper, he found that he sorely 
needed the language of the country. So by the 
time we reach the reign of Edward VL, we find 
Thomas Hoby, a typical young gentleman of the 
period, making in his diary entries such as these : 
" Removed to the middes of Italy, to have a better 
knowledge of ye tongue and to see Tuscany." 
" Went to Sicily both to have a sight of the country 
and also to absent myself for a while out of 
Englishmenne's companie for the tung's sake." ^ 
Roger Ascham a year or two later writes from 
Germany that one of the chief advantages of 
being at a foreign court was the ease with which 

1 The Travels and Life of Sir Thomas Hohy, ed. Powell, 1902, pp. 
18, 37- 
16 




KDWARI) I)E VERE, SEVENTEENTH EARL OF OXFORD 

_ Front an engraving by J. Broivn after C. P. Hariiing 

This favourite of Queen Elizabeth introduced many Italian fashions to her Court 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

one learned German, French, and Italian, whether 
he would or not. " I am almost an Italian my- 
self and never looks on it." He went so far as to 
say that such advantages were worth ten fellowships 
at St John's.^ 

We have noted how Italy came to be the lode- 
stone of scholars, and how courtiers sought the 
grace which France bestowed, but we have not 
yet accounted for the attraction of Germany. 
Germany, as a centre of travel, was especially 
popular in the reign of Edward the Sixth. France 
went temporarily out of fashion with those men 
of whom we have most record. For in Edward's 
reign the temper of the leading spirits in England 
was notably at variance with the court of France. 
It was to Germany that Edward's circle of 
Protestant politicians, schoolmasters, and chaplains 
felt most drawn — to the country where the tides 
of the Reformation were running high, and men 
were in a ferment over things of the spirit ; to 
the country of Sturm and Bucer, and Fagius 
and Ursinus — the doctrinalists and educators so 
revered by Cambridge. Cranmer, who gathered 
under his roof as many German savants as could 
survive in the climate of England,^ kept the 

i Ascham's Works, ed. Giles, vol. i., Part II., p. 265. 

2 I refer to the death of Bucer and P. Fagius. Strype {Life of 
Cranmer, p. 282) says that when they arrived in England in the month 
of April they " very soon fell sick : which gave a very unhappy stop 

B 17 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

current of understanding and sympathy flowing 
between Cambridge and Germany, and since 
Cambridge, not Oxford, dominated the scholarly 
and political world of Edward the Sixth, from 
that time on Germany, in the minds of the St 
John's men, such as Burleigh, Ascham and Hoby, 
was the place where one might meet the best 
learned of the day. 

We have perhaps said enough to indicate 
roughly the sources of the Renaissance fashion for 
travel which gave rise to the essays we are about 
to discuss. The scholar's desire to specialize at a 
foreign university, in Greek, in medicine, or in 
law; the courtier's ambition to acquire modern 
languages, study foreign governments, and gener- 
ally fit himself for the service of the State, were 
dignified aims which in men of character produced 
very happy results. It was natural that others 
should follow their example. In Elizabethan 
times the vogue of travelling to become a " com- 
pleat person " was fully established. And though 
in mean and trivial men the ideal took on such 
odd shapes and produced such dubious results that 
in every generation there were critics who ques- 
tioned the benefits of travel, the ideal persisted. 
There was always something, certainly, to be 

to their studies. Fagius on the fifth of November came to Cambridge, 
and ten days afterwards died." 

i8 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

learned abroad, for men of every calibre. Those 
who did not profit by the study of international 
law learned new tricks of the rapier. And because 
experience of foreign countries was expensive and 
hard to come at, the acquirement of it gave prestige 
to a young man. 

Besides, underneath worldly ambition was the 
old curiosity to see the world and know all sorts 
of men — to be tried and tested. More powerful 
than any theory of education was the yearning for 
far-off, foreign things, and the magic of the sea. 



19 



Chapter II 

THE HIGH PURPOSE OF THE 
ELIZABETHAN TRAVELLER 

THE love of travel, we all know, flourished 
exceedingly in the reign of Queen 
Elizabeth. All classes felt the desire 
to go beyond seas upon 

" Such wind as scatters young men through the world, 
To seeke their fortunes farther than at home, 
Where small experience growes." ^ 

The explorer and the poet, the adventurer, the 
prodigal and the earl's son, longed alike for foreign 
shores. What Ben Jonson said of Coryat might 
be stretched to describe the average Elizabethan : 
" The mere superscription of a letter from Zurich 
sets him up like a top : Basil or Heidelberg makes 
him spinne. And at seeing the word Frankford, 
or Venice, though but in the title of a Booke, he 
is readie to breake doublet, cracke elbowes, and 
overflowe the roome with his murmure." ^ Happy 
was an obscure gentleman like Fynes Moryson, 
who could roam for ten years through the " twelve 
Dominions of Germany, Bohmerland, Sweitzer- 
land, Netherland, Denmarke, Poland, Italy, 

1 Taming of the Shreiv, Act I. Sc. ii. 

2 Coryat's Crudities, ed. 1905, p. 17. 

20 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

Turkey, France, England, Scotland and Ireland " 
and not be peremptorily called home by his 
sovereign. Sad it was to be a court favourite like 
Fulke Greville, who four times, thirsting for strange 
lands, was plucked back to England by Elizabeth. 
At about the time (1575) when some of the 
most prominent courtiers — Edward Dyer, Gilbert 
Talbot, the Earl of Hertford, and more especially 
Sir Christopher Hatton and Sir Philip Sidney — 
had just returned from abroad, book-publishers 
thought it worth while to print books addressed 
to travellers. At least, there grew up a demand 
for advice to young men which became a feature 
of Elizabethan literature, printed and unprinted. 
It was the convention for a young man about to 
travel to apply to some experienced or elderly 
friend, and for that friend to disburden a torrent 
of maxims after the manner of Polonius. John 
Florio, who knew the humours of his day, repre- 
sents this in a dialogue in Second F rules} So 
does Robert Greene in Greene s Mourning Gar- 
mentP' What were at first the personal warnings 
of a wise man to his young friend, such as Cecil's 

1 Ed. 1 59 1, p. 91. 

2 Works, ed. Grossart, ix. 139. In which the father of Philador, 
among many other admonitions, forestalls Sir Henry Wotton's famous 
advice to Milton on the traveller's need of holding his tongue : *' Be, 
Philador, in secrecy like the Arabick-tree, that yields no gumme but 
in the darke night." 

21 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

letter to Rutland, grew into a generalized oration 
for the use of any traveller. Hence arose manuals 
of instruction — marvellous little books, full ot 
incitements to travel as the duty of man, sum- 
maries of the leading characteristics of foreigners, 
directions for the care of sore feet — and a strange 
medley of matters. 

Among the first essays of this sort are trans- 
lations from Germanic writers, with whom, if 
Turler is right, the book of precepts for travel 
originated. For the Germans, with the English, 
were the most indefatigable travellers of all nations. 
Like the English, they suddenly woke up with a 
start to the idea that they were barbarians on the 
outskirts of civilization, and like Chicago of the 
present day, sent their young men " hustling for 
culture." They took up assiduously not only the 
Renaissance ideal of travel as a highly educating 
experience, by which one was made a complete 
man intellectually, but also the Renaissance 
conviction that travel was a duty to the State. 
Since both Germany and England were somewhat 
removed from the older and more civilized nations, 
it was necessary for them to make an effort to 
learn what was going on at the centre of the 
world. It was therefore the duty of gentlemen, 
especially of noblemen, to whom the State would 
look to be directed, to search out the marts of 

22 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

learning, frequent foreign courts, and by knowing 
men and languages be able to advise their prince 
at home, after the manner set forth in // Corte- 
giano. It must be remembered that in the six- 
teenth century there were no schools of political 
economy, of modern history or modern languages 
at the universities. A sound knowledge of these 
things had to be obtained by first-hand observa- 
tion. From this fact arose the importance of 
improving one's opportunities, and the necessity 
for methodical, thorough inquiry, which we shall 
find so insisted upon in these manuals of advice. 

Hieronymus Turlerus claims that his De Pere- 
grinatione (Argentorati, 1574) is the first book 
to be devoted to precepts of travel. It was trans- 
lated into English and published in London in 
1575, under the title of The Traveller of Jerome 
lurler^ and is, as far as I know, the first book of 
the sort in England. Not much is known of 
Turler, save that he was born at Leissnig, in 
Saxony, in 1550, studied at Padua, became a 
Doctor of Law, made such extensive travels that 
he included even England — a rare thing in those 
days — and after serving as Burgomaster in his 
native place, died in 1602. His writings, other 
than De Peregrinatione^ are three translations 
from Machiavelli.^ 

* Jocher, GeUhrten- Lexicon, 175I} and Zedler's Universal- Lexicon. 

23 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

Turler addresses to two young German noble- 
men his book " written on behalf of such as are 
desirous to travell, and to see foreine cuntries, 
and specially of students. . . . Mee thinkes 
they do a good deede, and well deserve of al 
men, that give precepts for traveyl. Which thing, 
althoughe I perceive that some have done, yet 
have they done it here and there in sundrie Bookes 
and not in any one certeine place." A discussion 
of the advantages of travel had appeared in 
Thomas Wilson's Arte of Rhetorique (1553V 
and certain practical directions for avoiding 
ailments to which travellers were susceptible had 
been printed in Basel in 1561,^ but Turler's 
would seem to be the first book devoted to the 
praise of peregrination. Not only does Turler 
say so himself, but Theodor Zwinger, who three 
years later wrote Methodus Apodemica^ declares 
that Turler and Pyrckmair were his only pre- 
decessors in this sort of composition.^ 

Pyrckmair was apparently one of those gover- 
nors, or Hofmeister,^ who accompanied young 

1 Clarendon Press ed. 1909, p. 29. 

2 G. Gratarolus, De Regimine Iter Agentium. Some insight into 
the trials of travel in the sixteenth century may be gained by the 
sections on how to endure hunger and thirst, how to restore the 
appetite, make up lost sleep, ward ofF fever, avoid vermin, take care 
of sore feet, thaw frozen limbs, and so forth. 

^ Methodus Apodemicay Basel, 1577, fol. B, verso. 

* Paul Hentzner, whose travels were reprinted by Horace Walpole, 

24 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

German noblemen on their tours through Europe. 
He drew up a few directions, he declares, as 
guidance for himself and the Count von 
Sultz, whom he expected shortly to guide into 
Italy. He had made a previous journey to 
Rome, which he enjoyed with the twofold 
enthusiasm of the humanist and the Roman 
Catholic, beholding " in a stupor of admiration " 
the magnificent remnants of classic civilization 
and the institutions of a benevolent Pope.^ 

From Plantin's shop in Antwerp came in 1587 
a narrative by another Hofmeister — Stephen 
Vinandus Pighius — concerning the life and travels 
of his princely charge, Charles Frederick, Duke 
of Cleves, who on his grand tour died in Rome. 
Pighius discusses at considerable length,^ in 
describing the hesitancy of the Duke's guardians 
about sending him on a tour, the advantages and 
disadvantages of travel. The expense of it and 
the diseases you catch, were great deterrents ; yet 
the widening of the mind which judicious travell- 
ing insures, so greatly outweighed these and other 
disadvantages, that it was arranged after much 

was a Hofmeister of this sort. The letter of dedication which he 
prefixed to his Itinerary in 1612 is a section, verbatim, of Pyrck- 
mair's De Arte Apodemica. 

1 De Arte Apodemica, Ingolstadii, 1577, fols. 5-6. 

2 Hercules Prodicius^ seu prmcipis juventutis vita et peregrinatioy 

25 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

discussion, " not only in the Council but also in 
the market-place and at the dinner-table," to send 
young Charles for two years to Austria to the 
court of his uncle the Emperor Maximilian, and 
then to Italy, France, and Lower Germany to 
visit the princess, his relations, and friends, and to 
see life. 

Theodor Zwinger, who was reputed to be 
the first to reduce the art of travel into a form 
and give it the appearance of a science,^ died a 
Doctor of Medicine at Basel. He had no liking 
for his father's trade of furrier, but apprenticed 
himself for three years to a printer at Lyons. 
Somehow he managed to learn some philosophy 
from Peter Ramus at Paris, and then studied 
medicine at Padua, where he met Jerome Turler." 
As Doctor of Philosophy and Medicine he occu- 
pied several successive professorships at Basel. 

Even more distinguished in the academic world 
was the next to carry on the discussion of travel 
— Justus Lipsius. His elegant letter on the 
subject,^ written a year after Zwinger's book 
was published, was translated into English by 
Sir John Stradling in 1592.^ Stradling, how- 

1 Jocher, Gelehrten- Lexicon, under Zwinger. 

2 Zwinger, Methodus Apodemica, fol. B, verso. 

2 Ad. Ph. Lanoyum, fol. io6, in Justi Lips'ti Ep'tstola Selectay 
Parisiis, 1610. 

* A Direction for Travailers, London, 1592. 

26 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

ever, has so enlarged the original by whatever 
fancies of his own occurred to him, that it is 
almost a new composition. Philip Jones took 
no such liberties with the " Method " of Albert 
Meier, which he translated two years after it was 
published in 1587.^ In his dedication to Sir 
Francis Drake of " this small but sweete booke 
of Method for men intending their profit and 
honor by the experience of the world," Jones 
declares that he first meant it only to benefit 
himself, " when pleasure of God, convenient time 
and good company " should draw him to travel. 

Tht Pervigilium Mercurii of Georgms Loysius, 
a friend of Scaliger, was never translated into 
English, but the important virtues of a traveller 
therein described had their influence on English 
readers. Loysius compiled two hundred short 
petty maxims, illustrated by apt classical quotations, 
bearing on the correct behaviour and duties of a 
traveller. For instance, he must avoid luxury, as 
says Seneca ; and laziness, as say Horace and Ovid ; 
he must be reticent about his wealth and learning 
and keep his counsel, like Ulysses. He must 
observe the morals and religion of others, but not 
criticise them, for difi^erent nations have different 

1 " Methodus describendi regiones, urbes, et arces, et quid singulis 
locis prascipue in peregrinationibus homines nobiles ac docti anim- 
advertere observare et annotare debeant." Meier was a Danish 
geographer and historian, 1528- 1603. 

27 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

religions, and think that their fathers' gods ought 
to be served diligently. He that disregards these 
things acts with pious zeal but without consideration 
for other people's feelings (" nulla ratione cujusque 
vocationis").^ James Howell may have read maxim 
99 on how to take jokes and how to make them, 
"joci sine vilitate, risus sine cachinno, vox sine 
clamore" (let your jokes be free from vulgarity, 
your laugh not a guffaw, and your voice not a 
roar). 

Loysius reflects the sentiment of his country in 
his conviction that " Nature herself desires that 
women should stay at home." " It is true through- 
out the whole of Germany that no woman unless 
she is desperately poor or ' rather fast ' desires to 
travel." ^ 

Adding to these earliest essays the Oration in 
Praise of Travel^ by Hermann Kirchner,^ we 
have a group of instructions sprung from German 
soil all characterized by an exalted mood and soar- 

1 G. Loys'ti Curiovo'itlandi Pervigilium Mercurii. Curiae Variscorum, 
1598. (Nos. 17, 20, 23, 27.) 

2 Op. cit.. No. 109. 

3 Translated by Thomas Coryat in his Crudities, 161 1. He must 
have picked up the oration in his tour of Germany ; but nothing 
which appears to be the original is given among the forty-six works of 
Hermann Kirchner, Professor of History and Poetry at Marburg, as 
cited by Jocher, though the other " Oratio de Germaniae perlustratione 
omnibus aliis peregrinationibus anteferenda," also translated by Coryat, 
is there listed. 

28 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

ing style. They have in common the tendency to 
rationalize the activities of man, which was so 
marked a feature of the Renaissance. The simple 
errant impulse that Chaucer noted as belonging 
with the songs of birds and coming of spring, is 
dignijfied into a philosophy of travel. 

Travel, according to our authors, is one of the 
best ways to gain personal force, social effective- 
ness — in short, that mysterious "virtu" by which 
the Renaissance set such great store. It had the 
negative value of providing artificial trials for 
young gentlemen with patrimony and no occupa- 
tion who might otherwise be living idly on 
their country estates, or dissolutely in London. 
Knight-errantry, in chivalric society, had provided 
the hardships and discipline agreeable to youth ; 
travel " for vertues sake, to apply the study of 
good artes," ^ was in the Renaissance an excellent 
way to keep a young man profitably busy. For 
besides the academic advantages of foreign uni- 
versities, travel corrected the character. The rude 
and arrogant young nobleman who had never 
before left his own country, met salutary opposi- 
tion and contempt from strangers, and thereby 
gained modesty. By observing the refinements 
of the older nations, his uncouthness was softened: 
the rough barbarian cub was gradually mollified 

1 Turler, The Traveller y p. 12. 

29 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

into the civil courtier. And as for giving one 
prudence and patience, never was such a mentor 
as travel. The tender, the effeminate, the 
cowardly, were hardened by contention with 
unwonted cold or rain or sun, with hard seats, 
stony pillows, thieves, and highwaymen. Any 
simple, improvident, and foolish youth would be 
stirred up to vigilancy by a few experiences with 
" the subtelty of spies, the wonderful cunning of 
Inn-keepers and baudes and the great danger of 
his life."^ In short, the perils and discomforts of 
travel made a mild prelude to the real life into 
which a young man must presently fight his way. 
Only experience could teach him how to be 
cunning, wary, and bold ; how he might hold 
his own, at court or at sea, among Elizabeth's 
adventurers. 

However, this development of the individual 
was only part of the benefit of travel. Far more 
to be extolled was his increased usefulness to the 
State. That was the stoutest reason for leaving 
one's " owne sweete country dwellings " to endure 
hardships and dangers beyond seas. For a 
traveller may be of the greatest benefit to his 
own country by being able to compare its social, 
economic, and military arrangements with those 
of other commonwealths. He is wisely warned, 

1 Kirchner in Coryat's Crudities, vol. i. 131. 
30 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

therefore, against that fond preference for his own 
country which leads him to close his eyes to any 
improvement — " without just cause preferring his 
native country," ^ but to use choice and discretion, 
to see, learn, and diligently mark what in every 
place is worthy of praise and what ought to be 
amended, in magistrates, regal courts, schools, 
churches, armies — all the ways and means per- 
taining to civil life and the governing of a 
humane society. For all improvement in society, 
say our authors, came by travellers bringing home 
fresh ideas. Examples from the ancients, to com- 
plete a Renaissance argument, are cited to prove 
this.^ So the Romans sent their children to 
Marseilles, so Cyrus travelled, though yet but a 
child, so Plato " purchased the greatest part of his 
divine wisdome from the very innermost closets 
of Egypt." Therefore to learn how to serve 
one's Prince in peace or war, as a soldier, 
ambassador, or "politicke person," one must, like 
Ulysses, have known many men and seen many 
cities ; know not only the objective points of 
foreign countries, such as the fortifications, the 
fordable rivers, the distances between places, but 
the more subjective characteristics, such as the 
"chief force and virtue of the Spanyardes and of 

1 Turler, op. cit., p. 48. 

2 Lipsius, Turler, Kirchner. 

31 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

the Frenchmen. What is the greatest vice in both 
nacions ? After what manner the subjects in both 
countries shewe their obedience to their prince, or 
oppose themselves against him ? " ^ Here we see 
coming into play the newly acquired knowledge of 
human nature of which the sixteenth century was 
so proud. An ambassador to Paris must know 
what was especially pleasing to a Frenchman. 
Even a captain in war must know the special virtues 
and vices of the enemy : which nation is ablest to 
make a sudden sally, which is stouter to entertain 
the shock in open field, which is subtlest of the 
contriving of an ambush. 

Evidently, since there is so varied a need for 
acquaintance with foreign countries, travel is a 
positive duty. Noah, Aristotle, Solomon, Julius 
Caesar, Columbus, and many other people of 
authority are quoted to prove that " all that ever 
were of any great knowledge, learning or wisdom 
since the beginning of the world unto this present, 
have given themselves to travel : and that there 
never was man that performed any great thing 
or achieved any notable exploit, unless he had 
travelled." ^ 

This summary, of course, cannot reproduce the 
style of each of our authors, and only roughly 



^ Turler, The Traveller, p. 47. 
2 Turler, op. cit., p. 107. 



32 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

indicates their method of persuasion. Especially 
it cannot represent the mode of Zwinger, whose 
contribution is a treatise of four hundred pages, 
arranged in outline form, by means of which any 
single idea is made to wend its tortuous way 
through folios. Every aspect of the subject is 
divided and subdivided with meticulous care. He 
cannot speak of the time for travel without dis- 
criminating between natural time, such as years 
and days, and artificial time, such as festivals and 
holidays ; nor of the means of locomotion without 
specifying the possibility of being carried through 
the air by: (i) Mechanical means, such as the wings 
of Icarus ; or (2) Angels, as the Apostle Philip was 
snatched from Samaria.^ In this elaborate method 
he found an imitator in Sir Thomas Palmer.^ 
The following, a mere truncated fragment, may 
serve to illustrate both books : — 
" Travelling is either : — 
I. Irregular. 

II. Regular. Of Regular Travailers some be 
A. Non-voluntaries, sent out by the prince, 
and employed in matters of 

1. Peace (etc.). 

2. Warre (etc.). 

1 Methodus Apodemica^ p. 26. 

2 An Essay of the Meanes how to make our Trava'tles in forraine 
Countries the more projitable and honourable. London, 1606. 

c 33 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

B. Voluntaries. Voluntary Regular Tra- 
vailers are considered 
I. As they are moved accidentally. 

a. Principally, that afterwards they 

may leade a more quiet and con- 
tented life, to the glory of God. 

b. Secondarily, regarding ends, 
(i) Publicke. 

(a) What persons are inhibited 
travaile. 

, — .(i) Infants, Decrepite per- 
sons. Fools, Women, 

(b) What times to travaile in 
are not fitte : 

(2) When our country is 
engaged in warres. 

(c) Fitte. 

(i) When one may reape 

most profit in shortest 

time, for that hee aimeth 

at. 

(2) When the country, into 

which we would travaile, 

holdeth not ours in jealousie, 

etc. 

That the idea of travel as a duty to the State 

had permeated the Elizabethans from the courtier 

to the common sailor is borne out by contemporary 

34 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

letters of all sorts. Even William Bourne, an 
innkeeper at Gravesend, who wrote a hand-book 
of applied mathematics, called it The Treasure 
for Travellers^^ and prefaced it with an exhorta- 
tion in the style of Turler. In the correspond- 
ence of Lord Burghley, Sir Philip Sidney, Fulke 
Greville, the Earl of Essex, and Secretary Davi- 
son, we see how seriously the aim of travel was 
inculcated. Here are the same reminders to have 
the welfare of the commonwealth constantly in 
mind, to waste no time, to use order and method 
in observation, and to bring home, if possible, 
valuable information. Sidney bewails how much 
he has missed for " want of having directed my 
course to the right end, and by the right means." 
But he trusts his brother has imprinted on his 
mind " the scope and mark you mean by your 
pains to shoot at. Your purpose is, being a 
gentleman born, to furnish yourself with the 
knowledge of such things as may be serviceable 
to your country." "^ 

Davison urges the value of experience, scorn- 
ing the man who thinks to fit himself by books : 
" Our sedentary traveller may pass for a wise man 
as long as he converseth either with dead men 
by reading, or by writing, with men absent. But 

^ London, 1578. 

2 Sidney, Letter to his brother, 1580. 

^5 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

let him once enter on the stage of public employ- 
ment, and he will soon find, if he can but be 
sensible of contempt, that he is unfit for action. 
For ability to treat with men of several humours, 
factions and countries ; duly to comply with 
them, or stand off^, as occasion shall require, is 
not gotten only by reading of books, but rather 
by studying of men : yet this is ever held true. 
The best scholar is fittest for a traveller, as being 
able to make the most useful observations : ex- 
perience added to learning makes a perfect man.^ 

Both Essex and Fulke Greville are full of 
w^arnings against superficial and showy knowledge 
of foreign countries : " The true end of knowledge 
is clearness and strength of judgment, and not 
ostentation, or ability to discourse, which I do 
rather put your Lordship in mind of, because the 
most part of noblemen and gentlemen of our 
time have no other use nor end of their learning 
but their table-talk. But God knoweth they 
have gotten little that have only this discoursing 
gift: for, though like empty vessels they sound 
loud when a man knocks upon their outsides, yet 
if you pierce into them, you shall find that they 
are full of nothing but wind." ^ 

1 Profitable Instructions. Written c. 1595. Printed 1633. 

2 Profitable Instructions^ I595» Harl. MS, 6265, printed in 
Spedding's Letters and Life of Bacon, vol. ii. p. 14. Spedding believes 
these Instructions to be by Bacon. 

36 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

Lord Burghley, wasting not a breath, tersely 
instructs the Earl of Rutland in things worthy 
of observation. Among these are frontier towns, 
with what size garrison they are maintained, etc. ; 
what noblemen live in each province, by what 
trade each city is supported. At Court, what 
are the natural dispositions of the king and his 
brothers and sisters, what is the king's diet, etc. 
*' Particularly for yourself, being a nobleman, how 
noblemen do keep their wives, their children, 
their estates ; how they provide for their younger 
children ; how they keep the household for diet,'* 
and so on.^ 

So much for the attitude of the first " Sub- 
sidium Peregrinantibus." It will be seen that it 
was something of a trial and an opportunity to 
be a traveller in Elizabethan times. But bio- 
graphy is not lacking in evidence that the re- 
cipients of these directions did take their travels 
seriously and try to make them profitable to the 
commonwealth. Among the Rutland papers ^ is 
a plan of fortifications and some notes made by 
the Edward Manners to whom Cecil wrote the 
above letter of advice. Sir Thomas Bodley tells 
how full he was of patriotic intent : " I waxed 
desirous to travel beyond the seas, for attaining 



1 State Papers, Domestic Elizabeth, 1547-80, vol. Ixxvii,, No. 6. 

2 Hist. MSS. Comm. 1 2th Report, App. IV., January 31, 1571. 



37 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

to the knowledge of some special modern tongues, 
and for the increase of my experience in the 
managing of affairs, being wholly then addicted 
to employ myself, and all my cares, in the public 
service of the state." ^ Assurances of their object 
in travelling are written from abroad by Sir John 
Harington and the third Earl of Essex to their 
friend Prince Henry. Essex says : " Being now 
entered into my travels, and intending the end 
thereof to attain to true knowledge and to better 
my experience, I hope God will so bless me in 
my endeavours, that I shall return an acceptable 
servant unto your Highness." ^ And Harington 
in the same vein hopes that by his travels and 
experience in foreign countries he shall sometime 
or other be more fit to carry out the commands of 
his Highness.^ 

One of the particular ways of serving one's 
country was the writing of " Observations on his 
Travels." This was the first exercise of a young 
man who aspired to be a " politicke person." 
Harington promises to send to Prince Henry 
whatever notes he can make of various countries. 
Henry Wotton offers Lord Zouche " A View of 
all the present Almagne princes."^ The keeping 

^ Life, Written by Himself, Oxford, 1647. 
2 Devereux, Lives and Letters of the Devereux, vol. ii. 233. 
* Birch, Life of Prince Henry of Wales, App. No. XII. 
4 Life and Letters, by Pearsall Smith, vol. i. 246. 

38 




FRANCIS MANNERS, SIX'lll KAKI. I)K RUTLAND 

Abroad in 1598. One of a family of ^Elizabethan travellers. Edward, third Earl of 

Rutland, received a letter of instruction from Lord Burleigh concerninij what to 

observe in France in 1570. Roger, fifth Earl of Rutland, was directed by Bacon 

as to his tra\'els in 1596 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

of a journal is insisted upon in almost all the 
" Directions." " It is good," says Lord Burghley 
to Edward Manners, " that you make a booke of 
paper wherein you may dayly or at least weekly 
insert all things occurent to you," ^ the reason 
being that such observations, when contemporary 
history was scarce, were of value. They were 
also a guarantee that the tourist had been virtu- 
ously employed. The Earl of Salisbury writes 
severely to his son abroad : 

"I find every week, in the Prince's hand, a 
letter from Sir John Harington, full of the news 
of the place where he is, and the countries as he 
passeth, and all occurents : which is an argument, 
that he doth read and observe such things as are 
remarkable." 

This narrative was one of the chief burdens of 
a traveller. Gilbert Talbot is no sooner landed 
in Padua than he must write to his impatient 
parents and excuse himself for the lack of that 
" Relation." " We fulfil your honour's com- 
maundement in wrytynge the discourse of our 
travayle which we would have sent with thes 
letres but it could not be caryed so conveniently 
with them, as it may be with the next letres we 
wryte." ^ Francis Davison, the Secretary's son, 

1 Op. cit. 

« Talbot, MSS. in the College of Arms, vol. P, fol. 571. 

39 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

could not get on, somehow, with his " Relation 
of Tuscany." He had been ill, he writes at first ; 
his tutor says that the diet of Italy — " roots, 
salads, cheese and such like cheap dishes " — " Mr 
Francis can in no wise digest," and after that, he 
is too worried by poverty. In reply to his father's 
complaints of his extravagance, he declares : " My 
promised relation of Tuscany your last letter hath 
so dashed, as I am resolved not to proceed withal." ^ 
The journal of Richard Smith, Gentleman, who 
accompanied Sir Edward Unton into Italy in 
1563, shows how even an ordinary man, not 
inclined to writing, conscientiously tried to note 
the fortifications and fertility of each province, 
whether it was " marvellous barren " or " stood 
chiefly upon vines " ; the principal com.modities, 
and the nature of the inhabitants : " The people 
(on the Rhine) are very paynefull and not so 
paynefull as rude and sluttyshe." " They are 
well faced women in most places of this land, and 
as ill-bodied." ^ 

Besides writing his observations, the traveller 
laboured earnestly at modern languages. Many 
and severe were the letters Cecil wrote to his son 
Thomas in Paris on the subject of settling to his 
French. For Thomas's tutor had difficulties in 



1 Davison s Poetical Rhapsody. I. Biographical Notice, p. xxiii. 
^Sloane MS. 1813. 



40 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

keeping his pupil from dog-fights, horses and 
worse amusements in company of the Earl of 
Hertford, who was a great hindrance to Thomas's 
progress in the language.^ Francis Davison hints 
that his tour was by no means a pleasure trip, 
what with studying Italian, reading history and 
policy, observing and writing his " Relation." 
Indeed, as Lipsius pointed out, it was not easy 
to combine the life of a traveller with that of a 
scholar, " the one being of necessitie in continual 
motion, care and business, the other naturally 
affecting ease, safety and quietness," ^ but still, by 
avoiding Englishmen, according to our " Direc- 
tions," and by doggedly conversing with the 
natives, one might achieve something. 

To live in the household of a learned foreigner, 
as Robert Sidney did with Sturm, or Henry 
Wotton with Hugo Blotz, was of course especially 
desirable. For there were still, in the Eliza- 
bethans, remnants of that ardent sociability among 
humanists which made Englishmen traverse dire 
distances of sea and land to talk with some 
scholar on the Rhine — that fraternizing spirit 
which made Cranmer fill Lambeth Palace with 
Martin Bucers ; and Bishop Gardiner, meanwhile, 

1 State Papers, Domestic, 1547-80, vols, xviii., No. 31 ; 
xix., No. 6-^2 passim', xx., No. i-^g passim. 

2 Direction /or Travai/ers. 

41 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

complain from the Tower not only of " want of 
books to relieve my mind, but want of good 
company — the only solace in this world." ^ It 
was still as much of a treat to see a wise man 
as it was when Ascham loitered in every city 
through which he passed, to hear lectures, or argue 
about the proper pronunciation of Greek ; until 
he missed his dinner, or found that his party had 
ridden out of town.^ Advice to travellers is full 
of this enthusiasm. Essex tells Rutland " your 
Lordship should rather go an hundred miles to 
speake with one wise man, than five miles to see 
a fair town." Stradling, translating Lipsius, urges 
the Earl of Bedford to " shame not or disdaine 
not to intrude yourself into their familiarity.'' 
" Talk with learned men, we unconsciously 
imitate them, even as they that walke in the sun 
only for their recreation, are colored therewith 
and sunburnt; or rather and better as they that 
staying a while in the Apothecarie shop, til their 
confections be made, carrie away the smell of the 
sweet spices even in their garments." ^ 

There are signs that the learned men were not 
always willing to shine upon admiring strangers 
who burst in upon them. The renowned Doctor 

1 Stowe's Annals, p. 6oo. 

2 fVorh, ed. Giles, vol. i., Pt. ii., Epis. cxvi. 

3 Oj>. cit. 

42 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

Zacharias Ursinus at Heidelberg marked on his 
doorway these words : " My friend, whoever you 
are, if you come here, please either go away again, 
or give me some help in my studies." ^ Sidney 
foresees the difficulty his brother may have : 
" How shall I get excellent men to take paines to 
speake with me ? Truly, in few words : either 
much expense or much humbleness." ^ 

If one had not the means to live with famous 
scholars, it was a good plan to take up lodg- 
ings with an eminent bookseller. For statesmen, 
advocates and other sorts of great men came to the 
shop, from whose talk much could be learned. 
By and by some occasion would arise for in- 
sinuating oneself into familarity and acquaintance 
with these personages, and perhaps, if some one 
of them, " non indoctus," intended journeying to 
another city, he might allow you to attach your- 
self to him.' 

Of course, for observation and experience, there 
was no place so advantageous as the household 
of an ambassador, if one was fortunate enough 
to win an entry there. The English Ambassador 
in France generally had a burden of young gentle- 
men more or less under his care. Sometimes they 

1 Fox-Bourne's Life of Sidney, p. 91. 

a Op. cit. 

3 Thomae Erpenii, De Peregrinatione Gal/ica, 1631, pp. 6, 12, 

43 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

were lodged independently in Paris, but many be- 
longed to his train, and had meat and drink for 
themselves, their servants and their horses, at the 
ambassador's expense. 

Sir Amias Paulet's Letter-Book of 1577-8 
testifies that an ambassador's cares were consider- 
ably augmented by writing reports to parents. 
Mr Speake is assured that " although I dwell far 
from Paris, yet I am not unacquainted with your 
Sonne's doing in Paris, and cannot commend him 
enough to you as well for his diligence in study 
as for his honest and quiet behaviour, and I dare 
assure you that you may be bold to trust him as 
well for the order of his expenses, as for his govern- 
ment otherwise.^ Mr Argall, whose brother 
could not be taken into Paulet's house, has to be 
soothed as well as may be by a letter." Mr 
Throckmorton, after questionable behaviour, is 
sent home to his mother under excuse of being 
bearer of a letter to England. " His mother 
prayeth that his coming over may seeme to proceed 
of his owne request, because the Queen shall not 
be offended with it." His mother '* hath promised 
to gett him lycence to travil into Italic." But, 
says Paulet, " He may not goe into Italic withoute 
the companie of some honest and wyse man, and 

1 Copy-Booh of Sir Amias Poulet' s Letters, Roxburghe Club, p. 89. 
^Letter-Book,'^. 16. 

44 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

so I have tould him, and in manie other things 
have dealt very playnely with him." ^ 

Among these troublesome charges of Paulet's 
was Francis Bacon. But to his father, the Lord 
Keeper, Paulet writes only that all is well, and 
that his son's servant is particularly honest, diligent, 
discreet and faithful, and that Paulet is thankful 
for his " good and quiet behaviour in my house " 
— a fact which appears exceptional. 

Sir Dudley Carleton, as Ambassador to Venice, 
was also pursued by ambitious fathers.*^ Sir 
Rowland Lytton Chamberlain writes to Carle- 
ton, begs only " that his son might be in your 
house, and that you would a little train him 
and fashion him to business. For I perceive he 
means to make him a statesman, and is very 
well persuaded of him, . . . like a very indulgent 
father, ... If you can do it conveniently, it will 
be a favour ; but I know what a business it is to 
have the breaking of such colts, and therefore 
will urge no more than may be to your liking." ^ 

1 Letter-Booh, p. 89. 

^ Poems of Thomas Carenv, ed. W. C. Hazlitt, 1870. Pp. xxiii.-xxx. 

^ T. Birch, Court and Times of James /., vol. i. p. 218. 

The embarrassments of an ambassador under these circumstances 
are hardly exaggerated, perhaps, in Chapman's play, Monsieur D^Olive, 
where the fictitious statesman bursts into a protest : 

"Heaven I beseech thee, what an abhominable sort of Followers 
have I put upon mee : . . . I cannot looke into the Cittie, but one or 
other makes tender his good partes to me, either his Language, his 

45 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

Besides gaining an apprenticeship in diplomacy, 
another advantage of travelling with an am- 
bassador was the participation in ambassadorial 
immunities. It might have fared ill with Sir 
Philip Sidney, in Paris at the time of the 
massacre of Saint Bartholomew, if he had 
not belonged to the household of Sir Francis 
Walsingham. Many other young men not so 
glorious to posterity, but quite as much so 
to their mothers, were saved then by the same 
means. When news of the massacre had reached 
England, Sir Thomas Smith wrote to Walsing- 
ham : " I am glad yet that in these tumults and 
bloody proscriptions you did escape, and the 
young gentlemen that be there with you. . . . 
Yet we hear say that he that was sent by my 
Lord Chamberlain to be schoolmaster to young 
Wharton, being come the day before, was then 

Travaile, his Intelligence, or something : Gentlemen send me their 
younger Sonnes furnisht in compleat, to learn fashions, for-sooth : as 
if the riding of five hundred miles, and spending looo Crownes would 
make 'am wiser then God meant to make 'am. . . . Three hundred 
of these Gold-finches I have entertained for my Followers : I can go 
in no corner, but 1 meete with some of my Wifflers in there accoutra- 
ments ; you may heare 'am halfe a mile ere they come at you, and 
«mell 'am half an hour after they are past you : sixe or seaven make a 
perfect Morrice-daunce ; they need no Bells, their Spurs serve their 
turne : I am ashamed to traine 'am abroade, theyle say I carrie a whole 
Forrest of Feathers with mee, and I should plod afore 'am in plaine 
stufFe, like a writing Schole-maister before his Boyes when they goe 
a feasting." 

46 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

slain. Alas ! he was acquainted with nobody, 
nor could be partaker of any evil dealing. How 
fearful and careful the mothers and parents be 
here of such young gentlemen as be there, you 
may easily guess by my Lady Lane, who prayeth 
very earnestly that her son may be sent home 
with as much speed as may be." ^ 

The dangers of travel were of a nature to 
alarm mothers. As well as Catholics, there were 
shipwrecks, pirates, and highway robbers. Moors 
and Turks lay waiting " in a little port under 
the hill," to take passenger vessels that went 
between Rome and Naples. " If we had come 
by daye as we did by night, we had bin all taken 
slaves." ^ In dark strait ways up the sides of 
mountains, or on some great heath in Prussia, 
one was likely to meet a horseman " well fur- 
nyshed with daggs (pistols), who myght well be 
called a Swarte Ritter — his face was as black as 
a devill in a playe." ^ Inns were death-traps. A 
man dared not make any display of money for 
fear of being murdered in the night.^ It was 
wiser to disguise himself as a humble country boy 

^ Strype, Life of Sir Thomas Smith, p. 119. 

"^The Travels and Life of Sir Thomas Hoby, 1547- 1 564, ed. 
Powell, p. 27. 

2 Spelman, W., A Dialogue between Tivo Travellers, c. 1580, ed. 
by Pickering for the Roxburghe Club, 1896, p. 42. 

* Gratarolus, De Regimine iter agentium, 1 561, p. 19. 

47 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

and gall his feet by carrying all his gold in his 
boots. Even if by these means he escaped common 
desperadoes, he might easily offend the deadly 
University students, as did the eldest son of Sir 
Julius Caesar, slain in a brawl in Padua,^ or like the 
Admirable Crichton, stabbed by his noble pupil in 
a dark street, bleed away his life in lonely lodgings.^ 
Still more dangerous were less romantic ills, 
resulting from strange diet and the uncleanliness 
of inns. It was a rare treat to have a bed to 
oneself. More probably the traveller was obliged 
to share it with a stranger of disagreeable appear- 
ance, if not of disposition.^ At German ordin- 
aries " every travyler must syt at the ordinary 
table both master and servant," so that often they 
were driven to sit with such " slaves " that in the 
rush to get the best pieces from the common dish 
in the middle of the table, " a man wold abhor 
to se such fylthye hands in his dish." * Many 
an eager tourist lay down with small-pox before 
he had seen anything of the world worth 
mentioning, or if he gained home, brought a 
broken constitution with him. The third Lord 
North was ill for life because of the immoderate 

1 Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton, vol. i. p. 69. 

2 Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scot/and, 1 0th May 
1909. 

^ Florio, Second Frutes, p. 95. 
^Sloane MS., 1813, fol. 7. 

48 




HLDl.KV NORTH, THIKl) IJAKON NORTH 

Froin a print of an original picti(re in the Collection of the EarlofGtiildford 

In 1602 lie narrowly escaped the plague in Venice by drinking immoderate doses ot 

hot treacle, to which he ascribed his life-long ill-health 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

quantities of hot treacle he consumed in Italy, to 
avoid the plague.^ 

But it was not really the low material dangers 
of small-pox, quartain ague, or robbers which 
troubled the Elizabethan. Such considerations 
were beneath his heroical temper. Sir Edward 
Winsor, warned against the piratical Gulf of 
Malta, writes : " And for that it should not be 
said an Englishman to come so far to see Malta, 
and to have turned backe againe, I determined 
rather making my sepulker of that Golfe."^ It 
was the sort of danger that weakened character 
which made people doubt the benefits of travel. 
So far we have not mentioned in our description 
of the books addressed to travellers any of the 
reminders of the trials of Ulysses, and dark warn- 
ings against the " Siren-songs of Italy." Since 
they were written at the same time with the 
glowing orations in praise of travel, it might be 
well to consider them before we go farther. 

1 Article on the third Lord North in the Dictionary of National 
Biography, 

2 T. Wright, Queen Elizabeth, vol. i. p. 316. 



D 49 



Chapter III 

SOME CYNICAL ASPERSIONS UPON 
THE BENEFITS OF TRAVEL 

THE traveller newly returned from foreign 
lands was a great butt for the satirists. 
In Elizabethan times his bows and 
tremendous politeness, his close-fitting black 
clothes from Venice, his French accent, his finicky 
refinements, such as perfumes and pick-tooths, 
were highly off^ensive to the plain Englishman. 
One was always sure of an appreciative audience 
if he railed at the " disguised garments and 
desperate hats " of the "afi^ectate traveller " how; 
his attire spoke French or Italian, and his gait cried 
" behold me ! " how he spoke his own language 
with shame and loathing.^ " You shall see a 
dapper Jacke, that hath beene but over at Deepe,'"^ 
wring his face round about, as a man would stir 
up a mustard-pot, and talke English through the 
teeth, like . . . Monsieur Mingo de Moustrap." ^ 
Nash was one of the best at describing some who 
had lived in France for half-a-dozen years, " and 
when they came home, they have hyd a little 

1 Sir Thomas Overbury, An Affectate Traveller^ in Characters. 

2 Dieppe. 

^ Thomas Nash, Pierce Pennilesse, in Works^ ed. Grosart, vol. ii. 

27. 

50 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

weerish leane face under a broad French hat, kept 
a terrible coyle with the dust in the streete in 
their long cloaks of gray paper, and spoke English 
strangely. Naught else have they profited by 
their travell, save learnt to distinguish of the 
true Burdeaux Grape, and know a cup of neate 
Gascoygne wine from wine of Orleance ; yea, 
and peradventure this also, to esteeme of the 
poxe as a pimple, to weare a velvet patch on 
their face, and walke melancholy with their armes 
folded."^ 

The Frenchified traveller came in for a good 
share of satire, but darker things were said of the 
Italianate Englishman. He was an atheist — a 
creature hitherto unknown in England — who 
boldly laughed to scorn both Protestant and Papist. 
He mocked the Pope, railed on Luther, and liked 
none, but only himself.'^ " I care not," he said, 
" what you talk to me of God, so as I may have 
the prince and the laws of the realm on my 
side." ^ In politics he allied himself with the 
Papists, they being more of his^way of living than 
the Puritans, but he was faithless to all parties.* 
In private life he was vicious, and practised " such 
villainy as is abominable to declare," for in Italy 

1 Nash, The Unfortunate Traveller^ in lVoris,°ed. Grosart, v. 145. 

2 Roger Ascham, The Scholemaster, ed. Mayor, pp. 84-85. 

^ William Harrison, A Description of England, ed. Withington, p. 8. 
* Ascham, op. cit., p. 86. 

51 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

he had served Circes, who turns men into beasts J 
" But I am afraid," says Ascham, " that over 
many of our travellers unto Italy do not eschew 
the way to Circe's Court : but go and ryde and 
runne and flie thether, they make great hast to cum 
to her ; they make great sute to serve her : yea, I 
could point out some with my finger that never had 
gone out of England, but onlie to serve Circes in 
Italic. Vanitie and vice and any licence to ill living 
in England was counted stale and rude unto them." ^ 
It is likely that some of these accusations were 
true. Italy more than any other country charmed 
the Elizabethan Englishman, partly because the 
climate and the people and the look of things 
were so unlike his own grey home. Particularly 
Venice enchanted him. The sun, the sea, the 
comely streets, " so clean that you can walk in a 
Silk Stockin and Sattin Slippes," ^ the tall palaces 
with marble balconies, and golden-haired women, 
the flagellants flogging themselves, the mounte- 
banks, the Turks, the stately black-gowned 
gentlemen, were new and strange, and satisfied 
his sense of romance. Besides, the University of 
Padua was still one of the greatest universities in 
Europe. Students from all nations crowded to it. 

1 Robert Greene, Repentance, in Works, ed. Grosart, xii. 172 ; 
John Marston, Certalne Satires, 1598 ; Satire II., p. 47. 

2 Ascham, op. cit., p. 77. 

^ James Howell, Letters, ed. Jacobs, p. 69. 

52 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

William Thomas describes the " infinite resorte of 
all nacions that continually is seen there. And I 
thinke verilie, that in one region of all the worlde 
againe, are not halfe so many straungers as in 
Italic ; specially of gentilmen, whose resorte thither 
is principallie under pretence of studie ... all 
kyndes of vertue maie there be learned : and ther- 
fore are those places accordyngly furnisshed : not 
of suche students alone, as moste commonly are 
brought up in our universitees (meane mens 
children set to schole in hope to live upon hyred 
learnyng) but for the more parte of noble mens 
sonnes, and of the best gentilmen : that studie 
more for knowledge and pleasure than for curiositee 
or Inker: . . . This last wynter living in Padoa, 
with diligent serche I learned, that the noumbre of 
scholers there was little lesse than fiftene hundreth ; 
whereof I dare saie, a thousande at the lest were 
gentilmen." ^ 

The life of a student at Padua was much livelier 
than the monastic seclusion of an English uni- 
versity. He need not attend many lectures, for, 
as Thomas Hoby explains, after a scholar has been 
elected by the rectors, " He is by his scholarship 
bound to no lectures, nor nothing elles but what he 
lyst himselfe to go to." ^ So being a gentleman and 

1 William Thomas, The Histor'te of Italic, i 549, p. 2. 

2 Travels and Life of Sir Thomas Hoby, Written by Himself, ed. 
Powell, p. 10. 

52> 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

not a clerk, he was more likely to apply himself 
to fencing or riding : For at Padua " there passeth 
no shrof-tide without rennyng at the tilte, tour- 
neiyng, fighting at the barriers and other like feates 
of armes, handled and furnisshed after the best 
sort : the greatest dooers wherof are scholers." ^ 

Then, too, the scholar diversified his labours by 
excursions to Venice, in one of those passenger 
boats which plied daily from Padua, of which was 
said "that the boat shall bee drowned, when it 
carries neither Monke, nor Student, nor Curtesan. 
. . . the passengers being for the most part of 
these kinds " ^ and, as Moryson points out, if he 
did not, by giving offence, receive a dagger in his 
ribs from a fellow-student, he was likely to have 
pleasant discourse on the way.^ Hoby took 
several trips from Padua to Venice to see such 
things as the " lustie yong Duke of Ferrandin, 
well accompanied with noble menu and gentlemen 
. . . running at the ring with faire Turks and 
cowrsars, being in a maskerie after the Turkishe 
maner, and on foote casting of eggs into the 
wyndowes among the ladies full of sweete waters 
and damaske Poulders," or like the Latin Quarter 
students who frequent " La Morgue, " went to 

1 William Thomas, op, cit. p. 2. 

2 Fynes Moryson, An Itinerary^ etc., Glasgow ed. 1907, i. 159. 

3 Ihid. 

54 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

view the body of a gentleman slain in a feud, laid 
out in state in his house — "to be seen of all men."^ 
In the outlandish mixture of nations swarming at 
Venice, a student could spend all day watching 
mountebanks, and bloody street fights, and pro- 
cessions. In the renowned freedom of that city 
where " no man marketh anothers dooynges, or 
meddleth with another mans livyng," ^ it was no 
wonder if a young man fresh from an English 
university and away from those who knew him, 
was sometimes " enticed by lewd persons : " and, 
once having lost his innocence, outdid even the 
students of Padua. For, as Greene says, " as our 
wits be as ripe as any, so our willes are more ready 
than they all, to put into effect any of their licen- 
tious abuses." ^ Thus arose the famous proverb, 
" An Englishman Italianate is a devil incarnate." 

Hence the warnings against Circes by even 
those authors most loud in praise of travel. Lipsius 
bids his noble pupil beware of Italian women : 
" . . . inter fasminas, formse conspicuae, sed 
lascivae et procaces."^ Turler must acknowledge 
" an auntient complaint made by many that our 
countrymen usually bring three thinges with them 

1 Thoraas Hoby, op, c'tt. pp. 14, 15. 

2 William Thomas, op. at. p. 85. 

2 Robert Greene, All About Conny -Catching. Works, x. Foreword. 
^ Epistola de Peregrinatione in De Eruditione Comparanda^ 1 699, 
p. 588. 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

out of Italye : a naughty conscience, an empty 
purse, and a weak stomache : and many times it 
chaunceth so indeede." For since "youth and 
flourishing yeeres are most commonly employed in 
traveill, which of their owne course and condicion 
are inclined unto vice, and much more earnestly 
imbrace the same if it be enticed thereto," . . . 
" many a time pleasures make a man not thinke on 
his returne," . . , but he is caught by the songs 
of Mermaids, " so to returne home with shame and 
shame enough." ^ 

It was necessary also to warn the traveller 
against those more harmless sins which we have 
already mentioned : against an arrogant bearing 
on his return to his native land, or a vanity which 
prompted him at all times to show that he had 
been abroad, and was not like the common herd. 
Perhaps it was an intellectual affectation of atheism 
or a cultivated taste for Machiavelli with which 
he was inclined to startle his old-fashioned country- 
men. Almost the only book Sir Edward Unton 
seems to have brought back with him from Venice 
was the Hhtorie of N'lcolo Machiavelli^ Venice, 

^ST)!' ^^ ^^^ ^^^^ P^g^ h^ h^s written: " Mac- 
chavelli Maxima / Qui nescit dissimulare / nescit 
vivere / Vive et vivas / Edw. Unton. / " ^ Perhaps 

1 Turler, The Traveller^ Preface, and pp. 65-67. 

2 The Unton Inventories, ed. by J. G. Nichols, p. xxxviii. 

56 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

it was only his display of Italian clothes — " civil, 
because black, and comely because fitted to the 
body," ^ or daintier table manners than Englishmen 
used which called down upon him the ridicule of 
his enemies. No doubt there was in the returned 
traveller a certain degree of condescension which 
made him disagreeable — especially if he happened 
to be a proud and insolent courtier, who attracted 
the Queen's notice by his sharpened wits and 
novelties of discourse, or if he were a vain boy of 
the sort that cumbered the streets of London with 
their rufflings and struttings. 

In making surmises as to whom Ascham had in 
his mind's eye when he said that he knew men 
who came back from Italy with " less learning and 
worse manners," I guessed that one might be 
Arthur Hall, the first translator of Homer into 
English. Hall was a promising Grecian at Cam- 
bridge, and began his translation with Ascham's 
encouragement.^ Between 1563 and 1568, when 
Ascham was writing The Scolemaster^ Hall, with- 
out finishing for a degree, or completing the Homer, 
went to Italy. It would have irritated Ascham to 
have a member of St John's throw over his task 
and his degree to go gadding. Certainly Hall's 

1 Sir Robert Dallington, State of Tuscany, 1605, p. 64. 

2 Arthur Hall, Ten Books of Homer's Iliades^ 1581, Epistle to Sir 
Thomas Cicill. 

SI 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

after life bore out Ascham's forebodings as to the 
value of foreign travel. On his return he spent a 
notorious existence in London until the conse- 
quences of a tavern brawl turned him out of 
Parliament. I might dwell for a moment on 
Hall's curious account of this latter affair, because 
it is one of the few utterances we have by an 
acknowledged Italianate Englishman — of a certain 
sort. 

Hall, apparently, was one of those gallants who 
ruffled about Elizabethan London and used 

" To loove to play at Dice 
To sware his blood and hart 
To face it with a Ruffins look 
And set his Hat athwart." i 

The humorists throw a good deal of light on such 
"yong Jyntelmen." So does Fleetwood, the 
Recorder of London, to whom they used to run 
when they were arrested for debt, or for killing 
a carman, making as their only apology, " I am 
a Jyntelman, and being a Jyntelman, I am not 
thus to be used at a slave and a colion's hands." ^ 
Hall, writing in the third person, in the assumed 
character of a friend, describes himself as " a 
man not wholly unlearned, with a smacke of the 
knowledge of diverse tongues . . . furious when 
he is contraried ... as yourselfe is witnesse of 

^ Nicholas Breton : A Floorish upon Fanc'te, ed. Grosart, p. 6. 
2 Thomas Wright, Queen Elizabeth, ii. 205. 

58 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

his dealings at Rome, at Florence, in the way 
between that and Bollonia ... so implacable if 
he conceyve an injurie, as Sylla will rather be 
pleased with Marius, than he with his equals, in 
a maner for offences grown of tryffles. . . . Also 
spending more tyme in sportes, and following 
the same, than is any way commendable, and 
the lesse, bycause, I warrant you, the summes 
be great are dealte for." ^ 

This terrible person, on the i6th of December 
1573, at Lothbury, in London, at a table of 
twelve pence a meal, supped with some merchants 
and a certain Melchisedech Mallerie. Dice were 
thrown on the board, and in the course of play 
Mallerie " gave the lye with harde wordes in 
heate to one of the players." " Hall sware (as 
he will not sticke to lende you an othe or two), 
to throw Mallerie out at the window. Here 
Etna smoked, daggers were a-drawing . . . but 
the goodman lamented the case for the slaunder, 
that a quarrel should be in his house, . . . so . . . 
the matter was ended for this fitte." 

But a certain Master Richard Drake, attending 

1 "A letter sent by F.A. touching the proceedings in a private 
quarrel and unkindnesse, between Arthur Hall and Melchisedech 
Mallerie, Gentleman, to his very friend L.B. being in Italy," (Only 
fourteen copies of this escaped destruction by order of Parliament in 
1580. One was reprinted in 1815 in Miscellanea Ant'tqua Anglicana, 
from which my quotations are taken.) 

59 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

on my Lord of Leicester, took pains first to warn 
Hall to take heed of Mallerie at play, and then 
to tell Mallerie that Hall said he used " lewde 
practices at cards." The next day at " Ponies " ^ 
came Mallerie to Hall and " charged him very 
hotly, that he had reported him to be a cousiner 
of folkes at Mawe." Hall, far from showing that 
fury which he described as his characteristic, 
denied the charge with meekness. He said he 
was patient because he was bound to keep the 
peace for dark disturbances in the past. Mallerie 
said it was because he was a coward. 

Mallerie continued to say so for months, until 
before a crowd of gentlemen at the " ordinary " 
of one Wormes, his taunts were so unbearable 
that Hall crept up behind him and tried to stab 
him in the back. There was a general scuffle, 
some one held down Hall, the house grew full in 
a moment with Lord Zouche, gentlemen, and 
others, while " Mallerie with a great shreke ranne 
with all speede out of the doores, up a paire of 
stayres, and there aloft used most harde wordes 
againste Mr Hall." 

Hall, who had cut himself — and nobody else — 
nursed his wound indoors for some days, during 
which time friends brought word that Mallerie 
would " shewe him an Italian tricke, intending 

1 St Paul's Cathedral, the fashionable promenade. 
60 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

thereby to do him some secret and unlooked for 
mischief." Then, with " a mufle half over his 
face," Hall took post-horses to his home in 
Lincolnshire. Business called him, he tells the 
reader. There was no ground whatever for 
Mallerie to say he fled in disguise. 

After six months, he ventured to return to 
London and be gay again. He dined at " James 
Lumelies — the son, as it is said, of old M. Dom- 
inicke, born at Genoa, of the losse of whose 
nose there goes divers tales," — and coming by a 
familiar gaming-house on his way back to his 
lodgings, he "fell to with the rest." 

But there is no peace for him. In comes 
Mallerie — and with insufferably haughty gait and 
countenance, brushes by. Hall tries a pleasant 
saunter around Poules with his friend Master 
Woodhouse : " comes Mallerie again, passing 
twice or thrice by Hall, with great lookes and 
extraordinary rubbing him on the elbowes, and 
spurning three or four times a Spaniel of Mr 
Woodhouses following his master and Master 
Hall." Hall mutters to his servants, " Jesus can 
you not knocke the boyes head and the wall 
together, sith he runnes a-bragging thus ? " His 
three servants go out of the church by the west 
door : when Mallerie stalks forth they set upon 
him and cut him down the cheek. 

6i 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

We will not follow the narrative through the 
subsequent lawsuit brought by Mallerie against 
Hall's servants, the trial presided over by 
Recorder Fleetwood, the death of Mallerie, who 
*' departed well leanyng to the olde Father of 
Rome, a dad whome I have heard some say Mr 
Hall doth not hate " or Hall's subsequent expulsion 
from Parliament. This is enough to show the 
sort of harmless, vain braggarts some of these 
" Italianates " were, and how easily they acquired 
the reputation of being desperate fellows. Mallerie's 
lawyer at the trial charged Hall with " following 
the revenge with an Italian minde learned at 
Rome." 

Among other Italianified Cambridge men whom 
Ascham might well have noticed were George 
Ac worth and William Barker. Acworth had 
lived abroad during Mary's reign, studying civil 
law in France and Italy. When Elizabeth came 
to the throne he was elected public orator of the 
University of Cambridge, but through being idle, 
dissolute, and a drunkard, he lost all his prefer- 
ments in England.^ Barker, or Bercher, who 
was educated at St John's or Christ's, was abroad 
at the same time as Ascham, who may have met 
him as Hoby did in Italy.^ Barker seems to 

^Cooper's Athenae Cantabrigienses, i. 381. 

^ Life and Travels of Thomas Hohy^ Written by Himself p. 19, 20. 

62 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

have been an idle person — he says that after 
travels " my former fancye of professenge nothinge 
partycularly v«ras verye muche encreased ^ — and a 
papistical one, for on the accession of Mary he 
came home to serve the Duke of Norfolk, whose 
Catholic plots he betrayed, under torture, in 1571. 
It was then that the Duke bitterly dubbed him 
an " Italianfyd Inglyschemane," equal in faithless- 
ness to " a schamlesse Scote" ; ^ i.e. the Bishop of 
Ross, another witness. 

Edward de Vere, seventeenth Earl of Oxford, 
famous for his rude behaviour to Sir Philip Sidney, 
whom he subsequently tried to dispatch with 
hired assassins after the Italian manner,^ might 
well have been one of the rising generation of 
courtiers whom Ascham so deplored. In Ascham's 
lifetime he was already a conspicuous gallant, and 
by 157 1, at the age of twenty-two, he was the 
court favourite. The friends of the Earl of 
Rutland, keeping him informed of the news while 
he was fulfilling in Paris those heavy duties of 
observation which Cecil mapped out for him, 
announce that " There is no man of life and 
agility in every respect in Court, but the Earl of 

Ifiercher, Ded. to Queen Elizabeth, in The Nobility of Women, 1559, 
ed. by W. Bond for the Roxburghe Club, 1904. 
2 Ibid. Introduction by Bond, p. 36. 
8 D.N.B. Article by Sir Sidney Lee. 

63 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

Oxford.^ And a month afterwards, " Th* Erie 
of Oxenforde hath gotten hym a wyfFe — or at 
the leste a wyfFe hath caught hym — that is Mrs 
Anne Cycille, whearunto the Queen hath gyven 
her consent, the which hathe causyd great wypp- 
ing, wahng, and sorowful chere, of those that 
hoped to have hade that golden daye." ^ Ascham 
did not live to see the development of this 
favorite into an Italianate Englishman, but 
Harrison's invective against the going of noble- 
men's sons into Italy coincides with the return of 
the Earl from a foreign tour which seems to have 
been ill-spent. 

At the very time when the Queen " delighted 
more in his personage and his dancing and 
valiantness than any other," ^ Oxford betook him- 
self to Flanders — without licence. Though his 
father-in-law Burghley had him brought back to 
the indignant Elizabeth, the next year he set 
forth again and made for Italy. From Siena, on 
January 3rd, 1574-5, he writes to ask Burghley 
to sell some of his land so as to disburden him of 
his debts, and in reply to some warning of 
Burghley 's that his affairs in England need 

1 Hist. MSS. Commission, 12th Report, App. Part IV. MSS. 
of the Duke of Rutland, p. 94. 

2 Ibid. 

3 E. Lodge, Illustrations of British History ^ ii. 100. (Gilbert Talbot 
to his father, the Earl of Shrewsbury.) 

64 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

attention, replies that since his troubles are so 
many at home, he has resolved to continue his 
travels.^ Eight months afterwards, from Italy, 
he begs Burghley's influence to procure him a 
licence to continue his travels a year longer, stating 
as his reason an exemplary wish to see more of 
Germany. (In another letter also ^ he assures 
Cecil that he means to acquaint himself with 
Sturmius — that educator of youth so highly ap- 
proved of by Ascham.) " As to Italy, he is glad 
he has seen it, but cares not ever to see it again, 
unless to serve his prince or country." The 
reason they have not heard from him this past 
summer is that his letters were sent back because 
of the plague in the passage. He did not know 
this till his late return to Venice. He has been 
grieved with a fever. The letter concludes with 
a mention that he has taken up of Baptista 
Nigrone 500 crowns, which he desires repaid from 
the sale of his lands, and a curt thanks for the 
news of his wife's delivery.^ 

From Paris, after an interval of six months, he 
declares his pleasure at the news of his being a 
father, but makes no offer to return to England. 
Rather he intends to go back to Venice. He 

1 Hatfield MSS. (Calendar), ii. 83. 
- Ibid.^ ii. 129. 
* Ib'td.y ii. I 14. 

E 65 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

" may pass two or three months in seeing Con- 
stantinople and some part of Greece." ^ 

However, Burghley says, " I wrote to Pariss to 
hym to hasten hym homewards," and in April 
1576, he landed at Dover in an exceedingly sulky 
mood. He refused to see his wife, and told 
Burghley he might take his daughter into his own 
house again, for he was resolved " to be rid of 
the cumber." ^ He accused his father-in-law of 
holding back money due to him, although Burgh- 
ley states that Oxford had in one year ;;^5700.^ 
Considering that Robert Sidney, afterwards Earl 
of Leicester, had only ;!^ioo a year for a tour 
abroad,* and that Sir Robert Dallington declares 
jQ20o to be quite enough for a gentleman studying 
in France or Italy — including pay for a servant — 
and that any more would be " superfluous and to 
his hurte," ^ it will be seen that the Earl of Oxford 
had jQsS^^ " ^^ ^is hurte." 

Certain results of his travel were pleasing to 
his sovereign, however. For he was the first 
person to import to England "gloves, sweete 
bagges, a perfumed leather Jerkin, and other 

1 Hatfield MSS. (Calendar), ii. 129. 

2 Ibid., p. 131. 
^ Ibid., p. 144. 

* See "Sir Henry Sidney to his son Robert," 28th Oct. 1578, in 
Collin's Sidney Papers, i. 271. 

5 In ^ Method for Travell, c. 1 598, Fol. C. 

66 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

pleasant things." ^ The Queen was so proud of 
his present of a pair of perfumed gloves, trimmed 
with " foure Tufts or Roses of coloured Silk " 
that she was " pictured with those Gloves upon 
her hands, and for many yeeres after, it was 
called the Earle of Oxford's perfume." ^ His 
own foreign and fashionable apparel was ridiculed 
by Gabriel Harvey, in the much-quoted descrip- 
tion of an Italianate Englishman, beginning : 

*• A little apish hat couched faste to the pate, like an oyster." ^ 

Arthur Hall and the Earl of Oxford will 
perhaps serve to show that many young men 
pointed out as having returned the worse for 
their liberty to see the world, were those who 
would have been very poor props to society had 
they never left their native land. Weak and vain 
striplings of entirely English growth escaped the 
comment attracted by a sinner with strange 
garments and new oaths. For in those garments 
themselves lay an offence to the commonwealth. 
I need only refer to the well-known jealousy, 
among English haberdashers and milliners, of 
the superior craft of Continental workmen, behind 
whom English weavers lagged : Henry the Eighth 
used to have to wear hose cut out of pieces of 

^ John Stowe, Annales, ed. 1641, p. 868. 2 Jf^td. 

^ Gabriel Harvey, Letter-Book, Camden Society, New Series, 
No. xxxiii. p. 97. 

67 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

cloth — on that leg of which he was so proud — 
unless " by great chance there came a paire of 
Spanish silke stockings from Spaine." ^ Knit 
worsted stockings were not made in England till 
1554, when an apprentice "chanced to see a 
pair of knit worsted stockings in the lodging of 
an Italian merchant that came from Mantua.* 
Harrison's description of England breathes an 
animosity to foreign clothes, plainly founded on 
commercial jealousy : " Neither was it ever merrier 
in England than when an Englishman was known 
abroad by his own cloth, and contented himself at 
home with his fine carsey hosen, and a mean 
slop : his coat, gown, and cloak of brown, blue, 
or puke, with some pretty furniture of velvet or 
of fur, and a doublet of sad tawny, or black 
velvet, or other comely silk, without such cuts 
and garish colours, as are worn in these days, and 
never brought in but by the consent of the French, 
who think themselves the gayest men when they 
have most diversities of rags and change of colours 
about them." ^ 

Wrapped up with economic acrimony there 
was a good deal of the hearty old English hatred 
of a Frenchman, or a Spaniard, or any foreigner, 
which was always finding expression. Either it 

1 Stowe, Annales, ed. 164I, p. 867. ^ JbiJ,^ p, 869. 

3 Harrison's Description of England, ed. Withington, p. 1 1 1. 

68 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

was the 'prentices who rioted, or some rude fellow 
who pulls up beside the carriage of the Spanish 
ambassador, snatches the ambassador's hat off his 
head and " rides away with it up the street as 
fast as he could, the people going on and laughing 
at it," ^ or it was the Smithfield officers deputed 
to cut swords of improper length^ who pounced 
upon the French ambassador because his sword 
was longer than the statutes allowed. " He was 
in a great fury. . . . Her Majestic is greatly 
offended with the officers, in that they wanted 
judgement." " 

There was also a dislike of the whole new 
order of things, of which the fashion for travel 
was only a phase : dislike of the new courtier 
who scorned to live in the country, surrounded by 
a huge band of family servants, but preferred to 
occupy small lodgings in London, and join in 
the pleasures of metropolitan life. The theatre, 
the gambling resorts, the fence-schools, the bowl- 
ing alleys, and above all the glamor of the streets 
and the crowd were charms only beginning to 
assert themselves in Elizabethan England. But 
the popular voice was loud against the nobles who 
preferred to spend their money on such things 
instead of on improving their estates, and who 



^ T. Birch, Court and Times of James /., i. 191. 
^ E. Lodge's Illustrations of British History, ii. 228. 



69 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

squandered on fine clothes what used to be spent 
on roast beef for their retainers. Greene's Quip 
for aji Upstart Courtier parodies what the new 
and refined Englishman would say : — 

" The worlds are chaungde, and men are 
growne to more wit, and their minds to aspire 
after more honourable thoughts : they were dunces 
in diebus illis, they had not the true use of 
gentility, and therefore they lived meanely and 
died obscurely : but now mennes capacities are 
refined. Time hath set a new edge on gentle- 
men's humours and they show them as they 
should be : not like gluttons as their fathers did, 
in chines of beefe and almes to the poore, but in 
velvets, satins, cloth of gold, pearle : yea, pearle 
lace, which scarce Caligula wore on his birthday." ^ 

On the whole, we may say that the objections 
to foreign travel rose from a variety of motives. 
Ascham doubtless knew genuine cases of young 
men spoiled by too much liberty, and there were 
surely many obnoxious boys who bragged of 
their "foreign vices." Insular prejudice, jealousy 
and conservatism, hating foreign influence, drew 
attention to these bad examples. Lastly, there 
was another element in the protest against foreign 
travel, which grew more and more strong towards 
the end of the reign of Elizabeth and the beginning 

1 Harleian Miscellany, vol. v. pp. 400-401. 
70 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

of James the First's, the hatred of Italy as the 
stronghold of the Roman CathoHc Church, and 
fear of the Inquisition. Warnings against the 
Jesuits are a striking feature of the next group 
of Instructions to Travellers. 



71 



Chapter IV 

PERILS FOR PROTESTANT 
TRAVELLERS 

THE quickening of animosity between 
Protestants and Catholics in the last 
quarter of the sixteenth century had a 
good deal to do with the censure of travel which 
we have been describing. In their fear and hatred 
of the Roman Catholic countries, Englishmen 
viewed with alarm any attractions, intellectual or 
otherwise, which the Continent had for their sons. 
They had rather have them forego the advantages 
of a liberal education than run the risk of falling 
body and soul into the hands of the Papists. The 
intense, fierce patriotism which flared up to meet 
the Spanish Armada almost blighted the genial 
impulse of travel for study's sake. It divided 
the nations again, and took away the common 
admiration for Italy which had made the young 
men of the north all rush together there. We 
can no longer imagine an Englishman like Selling 
coming to the great Politian at Bologna and 
grappling him to his heart — " arctissima sibi 
conjunxit amicum familiaritate," ^ as the warm 
humanistic phrase has it. In the seventeenth 

^ Leland, J., De Scriptoribus Br'ttannicis, vol. i, 482. 
72 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

century Politian would be a " contagious Papist," 
using his charm to convert men to Romanism, 
and Selhng would be a " true son of the Church 
of England," railing at Politian for his " debauch'd 
and Popish principles." The Renaissance had set 
men travelling to Italy as to the flower of the 
world. They had scarcely started before the 
Reformation called it a place of abomination. 
Lord Burghley, who in Elizabeth's early days had 
been so bent on a foreign education for his eldest 
son, had drilled him in languages and pressed 
him to go to Italy,^ at the end of his long life left 
instructions to his children : " Suffer not thy 
sonnes to pass the Alps, for they shall learn 
nothing there but pride, blasphemy, and atheism. 
And if by travel they get a few broken languages, 
that shall profit them nothing more than to have 
one meat served on divers dishes." ^ 

The mother of Francis Bacon affords a good 
example of the Puritan distrust of going " beyond 
seas." She could by no means sympathize with 
her son Anthony's determination to become versed 
in foreign affairs, for that led him into intimacy 
with Roman Catholics. All through his pro- 
longed stay abroad she chafed and fretted, while 
Anthony perversely remained in France, gaining 



1 Calendar of State Papers, Foreign, 1562, Nos. 1069 and 1230. 
* E. Nares, Memoir of Lord Burghley, vol. iii. p. 513. 



73 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

that acquaintance with valuable correspondents, 
spies, and intelligencers which later made him one 
of the greatest authorities in England on continental 
politics. He had a confidential servant, a Catholic 
named Lawson, whom he sent over to deliver 
some important secret news to Lord Burghley. 
Lady Bacon, in her fear lest Lawson's company 
should pervert her son's religion and morals, had 
the man arrested and detained in England. His 
anxious master sent another man to plead with 
his mother for Lawson's release ; but in vain. 
The letter of this messenger to Anthony will serve 
to show the vehemence of anti-Catholic feelings 
in a British matron in 1589. 

"Upon my arrival at Godombery my Lady 
used me courteously until such time I began to 
move her for Mr Lawson ; and, to say the truth, 
for yourself; being so much transported with 
your abode there that she let not to say that you 
are a traitor to God and your country ; you have 
undone her ; you seek her death ; and when you 
have that you seek for, you shall have but a 
hundred pounds more than you have now. 

" She is resolved to procure Her Majesty's 
letter to force you to return ; and when that 
should be, if Her Majesty give you your right or 
desert, she should clap you up in prison. She 
cannot abide to hear of you, as she saith, nor of 

74 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

the other especially, and told me plainly she 
should be the worse this month for my coming 
without you, and axed me why you could not 
have come from thence as well as myself. 

" She saith you are hated of all the chiefest on 
that side and cursed of God in all your actions, 
since Mr Lawson's being with you. . . . 

" When you have received your provision, 
make your repair home again, lest you be a means 
to shorten her days, for she told me the grief of 
mind received daily by your stay will be her end ; 
also saith her jewels be spent for you, and that she 
borrowed the last money of seven several persons. 

" Thus much I must confess unto you for a 
conclusion, that 1 have never seen nor never shall 
see a wise Lady, an honourable woman, a mother, 
more perplexed for her son's absence than I have 
seen that honourable dame for yours." ^ 

It was not only a general hatred of Roman 
Catholics which made staunch Protestants anxious 
to detain their sons from foreign travel towards 
the end of Elizabeth's reign, but a very lively 
and well-grounded fear of the Inquisition and 
the Jesuits. When England was at war with 
Spain, any Englishman caught on Spanish territory 
was a lawful prisoner for ransom ; and since 

1 Lambeth MSS., No. 647, fol. iii. Printed in Spedding's Letters 
and Life of Bacon, vol. i. p. 1 10. 

75 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

Spanish territory meant Sicily, Naples, and Milan, 
and Rome was the territory of Spain*s patron, 
the Pope, Italy was far from safe for English- 
men and Protestants. Even when peace with 
Spain was declared, on the accession of James I., 
the spies of the Inquisition were everywhere on 
the alert to find some slight pretext for arresting 
travellers and to lure them into the dilemma of 
renouncing their faith, or being imprisoned and 
tortured. There is a letter, for instance, to Salis- 
bury from one of his agents on the Continent, 
concerning overtures made to him by the Pope's 
nuncio, to decoy some Englishman of note — 
young Lord Roos or Lord Cranborne — into 
papal dominions, where he might be seized and 
detained, in hope of procuring a release for 
Baldwin the Jesuit.^ William Bedell, about to 
go to Italy as chaplain to Sir Henry Wotton, 
the Ambassador to Venice, very anxiously asks a 
friend what route is best to Italy. " For it is told 
me that the Inquisition is in Millaine, and that if a 
man duck not low at every Cross, he may be cast in 
prison. . . . Send me, I pray you, a note of the chief 
towns to be passed through. I care not for seeing 
places, but to go thither the shortest and safest way." ^ 

1 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1603-1610, p. 634. 

2 Quoted in Life and Letters of Sir Henry JVotton, ed. by 
L. Pearsall Smith, vol. ii. p. 462. 

76 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

Bedell's fears were not without reason, for the 
very next year occurred the arrest of the unfor- 
tunate Mr Mole, whose case was one of the 
sensations of the day. Fuller, in his Church 
History^ under the year 1607, records how — 

" About this time Mr Molle, Governour to 
the Lord Ross in his travails, began his unhappy 
journey beyond the Seas. . . . He was appointed 
by Thomas, Earl of Exeter, to be Governour in 
Travail to his Grandchilde, the Lord Ross, under- 
taking the charge with much reluctance (as a 
presage of ill successe) and with a profession, and 
a resolution not to passe the Alpes. 

"But a Vagari took the Lord Ross to go to 
Rome, though some conceive this notion had its 
root in more mischievous brains. In vain doth 
Mr Molle dissuade him, grown now so wilfull, 
he would in some sort govern his Governour. 
What should this good man doe ? To leave him 
were to desert his trust, to goe along with him 
were to endanger his own life. At last his 
affections to his charge so prevailed against his 
judgment, that unwillingly willing he went wnth 
him. Now, at what rate soever they rode to 
Rome, the fame of their coming came thither 
before them ; so that no sooner had they entered 
their Inne, but Officers asked for Mr Molle, took 
and carried him to the Inquisition-House, where 

n 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

he remained a prisoner whilest the Lord Ross 
was daily feasted, favoured, entertained : so that 
some will not stick to say. That here he changed 
no Religion for a bad one." ^ 

No threats could persuade Mr Mole to renounce 
his heresy, and though many attempts were made 
to exchange him for some Jesuits caught in 
England, he lay for thirty years in the prison of 
the Inquisition, and died there, at the age of 
eighty- one. 

It was part of the policy of the Jesuits, accord- 
ing to Sir Henry Wotton, to thus separate their 
tutors from young men, and then ply the pupils 
with attentions and flattery, with a view to per- 
suading them into the Church of Rome. Not 
long after the capture of Mole, Wotton writes to 
Salisbury of another case of the same sort. 

" My Lord Wentworthe ^ on the i8th of May 
coming towards Venice . . . accompanied with 
his brother-in-law Mr Henry Crafts, one Edward 

IT, Fuller, The Church-History of Britain, ed. 1655, book. x. 
p. 48. The alleged reason for Mole's imprisonment, Fuller says, was 
that he had translated Du Plessis Mornay, *' his book on the Visibility 
of the Church, out of French into English ; but besides, there were 
other contrivances therein, not so fit for a public relation " {^supra, p. 49). 

2 Fourth Baron Wentworth of Nettlestead and first Earl of Cleve- 
land, I 591-1667, who became a Royalist general in the Civil War. 
At the time of Wotton's letter (1609) he was completing his educa- 
tion abroad after residence at Oxford. See Dictionary of National 
Biography, which does not, however, mention his foreign tour. 

78 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

Lichefeld, their governor, and some two or three 
other EngUsh, through Bologna, as they were 
there together at supper the very night of their 
arrival, came up two Dominican Friars, with the 
sergeants of the town, and carried thence the fore- 
said Lichefeld, with all his papers, into the prison 
of the Inquisition where he yet remaineth.^ Thus 
standeth this accident in the bare circumstances 
thereof, not different, save only in place, from 
that of Mr Mole at Rome. And doubtlessly (as 
we collect now upon the matter) if Sir John 
Harington ^ had either gone the Roman Journey, 
or taken the ordinary way in his remove thither- 
wards out of Tuscany, the like would have 
befallen his director also, a gentleman of singular 
sufficiency ; ^ for it appeareth a new piece of 
council (infused into the Pope by his artisans the 
Jesuits) to separate by some device their guides 

1 He was at once " reconciled " to the Church of Rome, entered 
the Society of the Jesuits, and "died a most holy death," in 1626, 
while filling the office of Confessor of the English College at Rome. 
H. Foley, Records of Society of Jesus^ vi. p. 257, cited in Life and 
Letters of Sir Henry IVotton, i. p. 457, note. 

2 Second Lord Harington of Exton, 1 592-1614; the favourite 
friend and companion of Henry, Prince of Wales. A rare and godly 
young man. For an account of him, and for his letters from abroad, 
in French and Latin, to Prince Henry, see T. Birch's Life of Prince 
Henry. 

3 " One Tovy, an * aged man,' late master of the free school, 
Guildford." Dictionary of National Biography, article on Sir John 
Harington, supra. 

79 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

from our young noblemen (about whom they are 
busiest) and afterwards to use themselves (for 
aught I can yet hear) with much kindness and 
security, but yet with restraint (when they come 
to Rome) of departing thence without leave; 
which form was held both with the Lords Rosse 
and St Jhons, and with this Lord Wentworthe 
and his brother-in-law at their being there. And 
we have at the present also a like example or two 
in Barons of the Almaign nation of our religion, 
whose governors are imprisoned, at Rome and 
Ferrara; so as the matter seemeth to pass into 
a rule. And albeit thitherto those before named 
of our own be escaped out of that Babylon (as far 
as I can penetrate) without any bad impressions, 
yet surely it appeareth very dangerous to leave 
our travellers in this contingency ; especially being 
dispersed in the middle towns of Italy (whither 
the language doth most draw them) certain nimble 
pleasant wits in quality of interceptors, who deliver 
over to their correspondents at Rome the disposi- 
tions of gentlemen before they arrive, and so 
subject them both to attraction by argument, and 
attraction by humour." ^ 

Wotton did not overrate the persuasiveness of 
the Jesuits. Lord Roos became a papist.^ 

1 Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton, i. 456-7. 

2 S. R. Gardiner, History of England, iii. 191. 

80 




"ius c a lama cenero/i hcs fcrss t:>fies 



JOHN IIARI\(;T0\, SECOND BARON HARINCTON OF EXTON 
His letters during his travels in 1604 were considered exemplary 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

Wotton's own nephew, Pickering, had been 
converted in Spain, on his death-bed, although he 
had been, according to the Jesuit records, " most 
tenacious of the corrupt rehgion which from his 
tender youth he had imbibed." ^ In his travels 
" through the greater part of France, Italy, Spain 
and Germany for the purpose of learning both 
the languages and the manners, an ancient custom 
among northern nations, ... he conferred much 
upon matters of faith with many persons, led 
either by inclination or curiosity, and being a 
clever man would omit no opportunity of gaining 
information." ^ Through this curiosity he made 
friends with Father Walpole of the Jesuit College 
at Valladolid, and falling into a mortal sickness in 
that city, Walpole had come to comfort him. 

Another conversion of the same sort had been 
made by Father Walpole at Valladolid, the year 
before. Sir Thomas Palmer came to Spain both 
for the purpose of learning the language and seeing 
the country. " Visiting the English College, he 
treated familiarly with the Fathers, and began to 
entertain thoughts in his heart of the Catholic re- 
ligion." While cogitating, he was " overtaken by a 
sudden and mortal sickness. Therefore, perceiving 
himself to be in danger of death, he set to work 

1 H. Foley, Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus y 
London, 1882, Series ii. p. 253. ^ Ibid. 

F 81 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

to reconcile himself with the Catholic Church. 
Having received all the last Sacraments he died, 
and v^as honourably interred with Catholic rites, 
to the great amazement also of the English Pro- 
testants, who in great numbers were in the city, 
and attended the funeral."^ 

There is nothing surprising in these death-bed 
conversions, when we think of the pressure brought 
to bear on a traveller in a strange land. As soon as 
he fell sick, the host of his inn sent for a priest, 
and if the invalid refused to see a ghostly comforter 
that fact discovered his Protestantism. Whereupon 
the physician and apothecary, the very kitchen 
servants, were forbidden by the priest to help him, 
unless he renounced his odious Reformed Religion 
and accepted Confession, the Sacrament, and 
Extreme Unction. If he died without these his 
body was not allowed in consecrated ground, but 
was buried in the highway like a very dog. It is 
no wonder if sometimes there was a conversion of 
an Englishman, lonely and dying, with no one to 
cling to.^ 

We must remember, also, how many reputed 
Protestants had only outwardly conformed to the 

1 Foley, op. cii., p. 256. The facts are confirmed by the report of 
the English Ambassador at Valladolid, 17th July 1605, O.S., printed 
in the I'Vinivood Memorials, vol. ii. p. 95. 

2 Fynes Moryson, Itinerary ^ ed. 1 907, vol. iii. pp. 390-1. 

82 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

Church of England for worldly reasons. They 
could not enter any profession or hold any public 
office unless they did. But their hearts were still 
in the old faith, and they counted on returning to 
it at the very end.^ Sometimes the most sincere 
of Protestants in sickness " relapsed into papistry." 
For the Protestant religion was new, but the 
Roman Church was the Church of their 
fathers. In the hour of death men turn to old 
affections. And so in several ways one can 
account for Sir Francis Cottington, Ambassador 
to Spain, who fell ill, confessed himself a 
Catholic ; and when he recovered, once more 
became a Protestant.^ 

The mere force of environment, according to 
Sir Charles Cornwallis, Ambassador to Spain from 
1605-9, was enough to change the religion of 
impressionable spirits. His reports to England 

1 Such as Dr Thomas Case of St John's in Oxford, whom Fuller 
reports as " always a Romanist in his heart, but never expressing the 
same till his mortal sickness seized upon him" [Church History, 
book ix. p. 235). 

2 Gardiner, History of England, vol. v. pp. 102-3. The same 
wavering between two Churches in the time of James I. is exemplified 
by " Edward Buggs, Esq., living in London, aged seventy, and a pro- 
fessed Protestant." He " was in his sicknesse seduced to the Romish 
Religion." Recovering, a dispute was held at his request between two 
Jesuits and two Protestant Divines, on the subject of the Visibility 
of the Church. " This conference did so satisfie Master Buggs, that 
renouncing his former wavering, he was confirmed in the Protestant 
truth" (Fuller, Church History, x. 102). 

83 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

show a constant struggle to keep his train of young 
gentlemen true to their national Church.^ 

The Spanish Court was then at Valladolid, in 
which city flourished an especially strong College 
of Jesuits. Thence Walpole, and other dangerous 
persuaders, made sallies upon Cornwallis's fold. 
At first the Ambassador was hopeful : — 

" Much hath that Creswell and others of that 
Societie " (the Jesuits) " bestir'd themselves here 
in Conference and Persuasion with the Gentlemen 
that came to attend his Excellencie^ and do secretly 
bragg of their much prevailinge. Two of myne 
own Followers I have found corrupted, the one in 
such sorte as he refused to come to Prayers, whom 
I presently discharged ; the other being an honest 
and sober young Gentleman, and one that denieth 
not to be present both at Prayers and Preachinge, 
I continue still, having good hope that I shall in 
time reduce him." ^ 

But within a month he has to report the con- 
version of Sir Thomas Palmer, and within another 
month, the loss of even his own chaplain. " Were 
God pleased that onlie young and weak ones did 
waver, it were more tollerable," he laments, " but 
I am put in some doubte of my Chaplaine him- 

1 IVinivood Memorials, vol. ii. 109. 

2 The Earl of Nottingham, Ambassador Extraordinary in 1605. 
^ Win'wood Memorials, vol. ii. 76. 

84 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

self." He had given the chaplain — one Wades- 
worth, a good Cambridge Protestant — leave of 
absence to visit the University of Salamanca. In 
a week the chaplain wrote for a prolongation of 
his stay, making discourse of " a strange Tempest 
that came upon him in the way, of visible Fire 
that fell both before and behind him, of an 
Expectation of present Death, and of a Vowe he 
made in that time of Danger." This manner of 
writing, and reports from others that he has been 
a secret visitor to the College of the Jesuits, make 
Cornwallis fear the worst. " I should think him 
borne in a most unfortunate how^er," he wails, 
" to become the occasion of such a Scandall." ^ 
But his fears were realized. The chaplain never 
came back. He had turned Romanist. 

The reasons for the headway of Catholicism in 
the reign of James I. do not concern us here. To 
explain the agitated mood of our Precepts for 
Travellers, it is necessary only to call attention 
to the fact that Protestantism was just then losing 
ground, through the devoted energy of the 
Jesuits. Even in England, they were able to 
strike admiration into the mind of youth, and to 
turn its ardour to their own purposes. But in 
Spain and in Italy, backed by their impressive 
environment and surrounded by the visible power 

^ Wtniuood Memorials, vol. ii. 1 09. 

8j 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

of the Roman Church, they were much more 
potent. The English Jesuits in Rome — Oxford 
scholars, many of them — engaged the attentions 
of such of their university friends or their country- 
men who came to see Italy, offering to show them 
the antiquities, to be guides and interpreters/ By 
some such means the traveller was lured into the 
company of these winning companions, till their 
spiritual and intellectual power made an indelible 
impression on him.^ 

How much the English Government feared the 
influence of the Jesuits upon young men abroad 
may be seen by the increasing strictness of licences 
for travellers. The ordinary licence which every- 
one but a known merchant was obliged to obtain 
from a magistrate before he could leave England, 
in 1595 gave permission with the condition that 
the traveller " do not haunte or resorte unto the 
territories or dominions of any foreine prince or 
potentate not being with us in league or amitie, 

1 Fynes Moryson, Itinerary, vol. i. p. 260. 

2 Such was the case of Tobie Matthew, son of the Archbishop of 
York, converted during his travels in Italy. This witty and frivolous 
courtier came home and faced the uproar of his friends, spent a whole 
plague-stricken summer in Fleet arguing with the Bishops sent to 
reclaim him, and then was banished. After ten years he reappeared at 
Coui't, as amusing as ever, the protege of the Duke of Buckingham- 
But under the mask of frippery he worked unsleepingly to advance the 
Church of Rome, for he had secretly taken orders as a Jesuit Priest. 
See Life of Sir Tobie Matthew, by A. H. Mathew, London, 1907. 

86 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

nor yet wittinglie kepe companie with any parson 
or parsons evell affected to our State." ^ But the 
attempt to keep Englishmen out of Italy was 
generally fruitless, and the proviso was too 
frequently disregarded. Lord Zouche grumbled 
exceedingly at the limitations of his licence. " I 
cannot tell," he writes to Burghley in 1591, 
"whether I shall do well or no to touch that part 
of the licence which prohibiteth me in general to 
travel in some countries, and companioning divers 
persons. . . . This restraint is truly as an imprison- 
ment, for I know not how to carry myself; I 
know not whether I may pass upon the Lords of 
Venis, and the Duke of Florens' territories, be- 
cause I know not if they have league with her 
Majesty or no." ^ Doubtless Bishop Hall was 
right when he declared that travellers commonly 
neglected the cautions about the king's enemies, 
and that a limited licence was only a verbal 
formality.^ King James had occasion to remark 
that " many of the Gentry, and others of Our 
Kingdom, under pretence of travel for their 
experience, do pass the Alps, and not contenting 
themselves to remain in Lombardy or Tuscany, 
to gain the language there, do daily flock to 

^ Davison's Poetical Rhapsody, ed. Nicolas, 1826, vol. i. p. vi. 

2 Life and Letters of Sir Henry IVotton, vol. ii. 482. 

3 Quo Vadis, A Just Censure of Travel, in IVorks, Oxford, vol. ix. 
p. 560. 

87 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

Rome, out of vanity and curiosity to see the 
Antiquities of that City ; where falling into the 
company of Priests and Jesuits . . . return again 
into their countries, both averse to Religion and 
ill-affected to Our State and Government.^ 

To come to our Instructions for Travellers, as 
given in the reign of James I., they abound, as 
we would expect, in warnings against the In- 
quisition and the Jesuits. Sir Robert Dallington, 
in his Method for Travell^" gives first place to the 
question of remaining steadfast in one's religion : 

" Concerning the Travellers religion, I teach 
not what it should be, (being out of my element ;) 
only my hopes are, he be of the religion here 
established : and my advice is he be therein well 
settled, and that howsoever his imagination shall 
be carried in the voluble Sphere of divers men's 
discourses ; yet his inmost thoughts like lines in 
a circle shall alwaies concenter in this immoveable 
point, not to alter his first faith : for that I knowe, 
that as all innovation is dangerous in a state ; so 
is this change in the little commonwealth of a 
man. And it is to be feared, that he which is of 
one religion in his youth, and of another in his 
manhood, will in his age be of neither. . . . 

1 Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton, vol. i. 70, note. 

2 A Method for Travell shelved by taking the vieiv of France, As 
it sioode in the year e of our Lord, 1598. 

88 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

" I will instance in a Gentleman I knew 
abroade, of an overt and free nature Zealously- 
forward in the religion hee carried from home, 
while he was in France, who had not bene twentie 
dayes in Italy, but he was as farre gone on the 
contrary Byas, and since his returne is turned 
againe. Now what should one say of such men 
but as the Philosopher saith of a friend, ' Amicus 
omnium, Amicus nullorum,' A professor of both, 
a believer in neither.^ 

" The next Caveat is, to beware how he heare 
anything repugnant to his religion : for as I have 
tyed his tongue ; so must I stop his eares, least 
they be open to the smooth incantations of an 
insinuating seducer, or the suttle arguments of a 
sophisticall adversarie. To this effect I must pre- 
cisely forbid him the fellowship or companie of one 
sort of people in generall : these are the Jesuites, 
underminders and inveiglers of greene wits, seducers 
of men in matter of faith, and subverters of men in 

1 Wood records such a state of mind in John Nicolls,who, in 1577 
left England, made a recantation of his heresy, and was " received 
into the holy Catholic Church." Returning to England he recanted 
his Roman Catholic opinions, and even wrote " His Pilgrimage, 
wherein is displayed the lives of the proud Popes, ambitious Cardinals, 
leacherous Bishops, fat bellied Monks, and hypocritical Jesuits " 
(1581). Notwithstanding which, he went beyond the seas again (to 
turn Mohometan, his enemies said), and under threats and imprison- 
ment at Rouen, recanted all that he had formerly uttered against the 
Romanists. — Athena Oxonienses, ed. Bliss, i. p. 496. 

89 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

matters of State, making of both a bad christian, 
and worse subject. These men I would have my 
Travueller never heare, except in the Pulpit ; for ^ 
being eloquent, they speake excellent language ; 
and being wise, and therefore best knowing how 
to speake to best purpose, they seldome or never 
handle matter of controversie." 

Our best authority in this period of travelling 
is Fynes Moryson, whose Precepts for Travellers * 
are particularly full. Moryson is well known as 
one of the most experienced travellers of the late 
Elizabethan era. On a travelling Fellowship 
from Peterhouse College, Cambridge, in 1591- 
1595 he made a tour of Europe, when the 
Continent was bristling with dangers for English- 
men. Spain and the Inquisition infected Italy 
and the Low Countries ; France was full of 
desperate marauding soldiers ; Germany nourished 
robbers and free-booters in every forest. It was 
the particular delight of Fynes Moryson to run 
into all these dangers and then devise means ot 
escaping them. He never swerved from seeing 

1 Understood: "for in the pulpit, being eloquent, they," etc. 

2 In volume iii. of his Itinerary (reprint by the University of 
Glasgow, 1908), preceded by an Essay of Tra'vel in General, a 
panegyric in the style of Turler, Lipsius, etc., containing most points 
of previous essays in praise of travel, and some new ones. For 
instance, in his defence of travel, he must answer the objection that 
travellers run the risk of being perverted from the Church of England. 

90 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

whatever his curiosity prompted him to, no 
matter how forbidden and perilous was the ven- 
ture. Disguised as a German he successfully 
viewed the inside of a Spanish fort ; ^ in the 
character of a Frenchman he entered the jaws 
of the Jesuit College at Rome."^ He made his 
way through German robbers by dressing as a 
poor Bohemian, without cloak or sword, with 
his hands in his hose, and his countenance servile.* 
His triumphs were due not so much to a dashing 
and magnificent bravery, as to a nice ingenuity. 
For instance, when he was plucked bare by the 
French soldiers of even his inner doublet, in 
which he had quilted his money, he was by no 
means left penniless, for he had concealed some 
gold crowns in a box of "stinking ointment" 
which the soldiers threw down in disgust.* 

His Precepts for Travellers are characteristic- 
ally canny. Never tell anyone you can swim, he 
advises, because in case of shipwreck " others 
trusting therein take hold of you, and make 
you perish with them." '^ Upon duels and re- 
sentment of injury in strange lands he throws 
cold common sense. " I advise young men to 
moderate their aptnesse to quarrell, lest they perish 
with it. We are not all like Amadis or Rinalldo, 



1 Itinerary, iii. 411. '^ Ihld., i. 304. ^ Ibid., i. 78-80. 

* Ibid., i. 399. '' Ibid,, iii. 389. 



91 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

to incounter an hoste of men." ^ Very thoughtful 
is this paragraph on the night's lodging : 

" In all Innes, but especially in suspected places, 
let him bolt or locke the doore of his chamber : 
let him take heed of his chamber fellows, and 
always have his Sword by his side, or by his 
bed-side ; let him lay his purse under his pillow, 
but always foulded with his garters, or some 
thing hee first useth in the morning, lest hee 
forget to put it up before hee goe out of his 
chamber. And to the end he may leave nothing 
behind him in his Innes, let the visiting of his 
chamber, and gathering his things together, be 
the last thing he doth, before hee put his foote 
into the stirrup." ^ 

The whole of the Precepts is marked by this 
extensive caution. Since, as Moryson truly 
remarks, travellers meet with more dangers than 
pleasures, it is better to travel alone than with 
a friend. "In places of danger, for difference 
of Religion or proclaimed warre, whosoever hath 
his Country-man or friend for his companion 
doth much increase his danger, as well for the 
confession of his companion, if they chance to 
be apprehended, as for other accidents, since he 
shall be accomptable and drawne into danger, 
as well as by his companion's words or deeds, 

^ Itinerary, iii. 400. "Ibid., iii. 388. 

92 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

as by his owne. And surely there happening 
many dangers and crosses by the way, many are 
of such intemperate affections, as they not only 
diminish the comfort they should have from this 
consort, but even as Dogs, hurt by a stone, bite 
him that is next, not him that cast the stone, so 
they may perhaps out of these crosses grow^ to 
bitterness of words betweene themselves." ^ In- 
stead of a companion, therefore, let the traveller 
have a good book under his pillow, to beguile the 
irksome solitude of Inns — " alwaies bewaring that 
it treat not of the Common-wealth, the Religion 
thereof, or any Subject that may be dangerous to 
him." ^ Chance companions of the road should 
not be trusted. Lest the traveller should become 
too well known to them, let him always declare 
that he is going no further than the next city. 
Arrived there, he may give them the slip and 
start with fresh consorts. 

Moryson himself, when forced to travel in 
company, chose Germans, kindly honest gentle- 
men, of his own religion. He could speak 
German well enough to pass as one of them, 
but in fear lest even a syllable might betray his 
nationality to the sharp spies at the city gates, he 
made an agreement with his companions that when 
he was forced to answer questions they should 

1 Ibid, iii. 387. - Ibid., iii. 375. 

93 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

interrupt him as soon as possible, and take the 
words out of his mouth, as though in rudeness. 
If he were discovered they were to say they knew 
him not, and flee away.^ 

Moryson advised the traveller to see Rome and 
Naples first, because those cities were the most 
dangerous. Men who stay in Padua some months, 
and afterwards try Rome, may be sure that the 
Jesuits and priests there are informed, not only of 
their coming, but of their condition and appear- 
ance by spies in Padua. It were advisable to 
change one's dwelling-place often, so to avoid 
the inquiries of priests. At Easter, in Rome, 
Moryson found the fullest scope for his genius. 
A few days before Easter a priest came to his 
lodgings and took the inmates' names in writing, 
to the end that they might receive the Sacrament 
with the host's family. Moryson went from 
Rome on the Tuesday before Easter, came to 
Siena on Good Friday, and upon Easter eve 
" (pretending great business) " darted to Florence 
for the day. On Monday morning he dodged to 
Pisa, and on the folowing, back to Siena. " Thus 
by often changing places I avoyded the Priests 
inquiring after mee, which is most dangerous 
about Easter time, when all men receive the 
Sacrament." ^ 

'^Itinerary, iii. 411. ^ Ibid.^ iii. 413. 

94 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

The conception of travel one gathers from 
Fynes Moryson is that of a very exciting form 
of sport, a sort of chase across Europe, in which 
the tourist was the fox, doubhng and turning 
and diving into cover, while his friends in 
England laid three to one on his death. So 
dangerous was travel at this time, that wagers on 
the return of venturous gentlemen became a 
fashionable form of gambling.^ The custom 
emanated from Germany, Moryson explains, and 
was in England first used at Court and among 
" very Noble men." Moryson himself put out 
j^ioo to receive ^2^300 on his return; but by 
1595, when he contemplated a second journey, 
he would not repeat the wager, because ridiculous 
voyages were by that time undertaken for in- 
surance money by bankrupts and by men of base 
conditions. 

Sir Henry Wotton was a celebrated product of 
foreign education in these perilous times. As a 
student of political economy in 1592 he led a 

1 See Ben Jonson, Every Man out of his Humour^ Act II. 
Sc. i. : "I do intend this year of jubilee coming on, to travel, and 
because I will not altogether go upon expense I am determined to put 
forth some five thousand pound, to be paid me five for one, upon the 
return of myself, my wife, and my dog from the Turk's court in 
Constantinople." Also the epigram of Sir John Davies in Poems, ed. 
Grosart, vol. ii. p. 40 : 

" Lycus, which lately is to Venice gone, 
Shall if he doe returne, gaine three for one." 

95 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

precarious existence, visiting Rome with the 
greatest secrecy, and in elaborate disguise. For 
years abroad he drank in tales of subtlety and 
craft from old Italian courtiers, till he was well 
able to hold his own in intrigue. By nature 
imaginative and ingenious, plots and counterplots 
appealed to his artistic ability, and as English 
Ambassador to Venice, he was never tired of 
inventing them himself or attributing them to 
others. It was this characteristic of Jacobean 
politicians which Ben Jonson satirized in Sir 
Politick-Would-be, who divulged his knowledge 
of secret service to Peregrine in Venice. Greatly 
excited by the mention of a certain priest in 
England, Sir Politick explains : 

" He has received weekly intelligence 
Upon my knowledge, out of the Low Countries, 
For all parts of the world, in cabbages ; 
And these dispensed again to ambassadors, 
In oranges, musk-melons, apricocks — , 
Lemons, pome-citrons, and such-like ; sometimes 
In Colchester oysters, and your Selsey cockles." ^ 

Later on Sir Politick gives instructions for 
travellers : 

" Some few particulars I have set down, 
Only for this meridian, fit to be known 
Of your crude traveller. . . . 
First, for your garb, it must be grave and serious, 
Very reserv'd and lock'd ; not tell a secret 



96 



1 Volpone : or the Fox, Act II. Sc. i. 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

On any terms ; not to your father : scarce 

A fable, but with caution : make sure choice 

Both of your company, and discourse ; beware 

You never speak a truth — 
Peregrine. How ! 

Sir P. Not to strangers. 

For those be they you must converse with most ; 

Others I would not know, sir, but at distance, 

So as I still might be a saver in them : 

You shall have tricks eke passed upon you hourly. 

And then, for your religion, profess none, 

But wonder at the diversity of all." l 

Sir Henry Wotton's letter to Milton must not 
be left out of account of Jacobean advice to 
travellers. It is brief, but very characteristic, 
for it breathes the atmosphere of plots and 
caution. Admired for his great experience and 
long sojourn abroad, in his old age, as Provost 
of Eton, Sir Henry's advice was much sought 
after by fathers about to send their sons on the 
Grand Tour. Forty-eight years after he him- 
self set forth beyond seas, he passed on to young 
John Milton " in procinct of his travels," his 
favourite bit of wrisdom, learned from a Roman 
courtier well versed in the ways of Italy : " I 
pensieri stretti e il viso sciolto." ^ Milton did not 
follow this Machiavellian precept to keep his 
" thoughts close and his countenance loose," as 

1 Ibid., Act III. Sc. V. 

2 The whole letter is printed in Pearsall Smith's Collection, vol. ii. 
p. 382. 

G 97 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

Wotton translates it,^ and was soon marked by 
the Inquisition; but he was proud of being advised 
by Sir Henry Wotton, and boasted of the " elegant 
letter " and " exceedingly useful precepts " which 
the Provost bestowed on him at his departure for 
Italy.2 

So much for the admonitory side of instructions 
for travellers at the opening of the seventeenth 
century. Italy, we see, was still feared as a 
training-ground for " green wits." Bishop Hall 
succeeded Ascham in denouncing the travel of 
young men who professed " to seek the glory of 
a perfect breeding, and the perfection of that 
which we call civility." Allowed to visit the 
Continent at an early age, " these lapwings, 
that go from under the wing of their dam 
with the shell on their heads, run wild." They 
hasten southwards, where in Italy they view 
the " proud majesty of pompous ceremonies, 
wherewith the hearts of children and fools are 
easily taken." ^ To the persuasive power of the 
Jesuits Hall devotes several pages, and makes an 
impassioned plea to the authorities to prevent 
Englishmen from travelling. 

1 Pearsall Smith's Collection, vol. ii. p. 364 (in another letter of 
advice on foreign travel). 

2 Defens'to secunda^ in Opera Lat'tna, Amstelodami, 1698, p. 96. 

2 Quo Vadis ? A Just Censure of Travel as it is undertaken by the 
Gentlemen of our Nation, London, 161 7. 

98 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

Parents could be easily alarmed by any pos- 
sibility of their sons' conversion to Romanism. 
For the penalties of being a Roman Catholic in 
England were enough to make an ambitious 
father dread recusancy in his son. Though a 
gentleman or a nobleman ran no risk of being 
hanged, quartered, disembowelled and subjected 
to such punishments as were dealt out to active 
and dangerous priests, he was regarded as a traitor 
if he acknowledged himself to be a Romanist. At 
any moment of anti-Catholic excitement he might 
be arrested and clapped into prison. Drearier than 
prison must have been his social isolation. For 
he was cut off from his generation and had no 
real part in the life of England. Under the laws 
of James he was denied any share in the Govern- 
ment, could hold no public office, practise no pro- 
fession. Neither law nor medicine, nor parliament 
nor the army, nor the university, was open to him. 
Banished from London and the Court, shunned by 
his contemporaries, he lurked in some country house, 
now miserably lonely, now plagued by officers in 
search of priests. At last, generally, he went 
abroad, and wandered out his life, an exile, despised 
by his countrymen, who met him hanging on at 
foreign Courts ; or else he sought a monastery 
and was buried there. To be sure, the laws 
against recusants were not uniformly enforced ; 

99 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

papistry in favourites and friends of the king 
was winked at, and the rich noblemen, who were 
able to pay fines, did not suffer much. But the 
fact remains that for the average gentleman to 
turn Romanist generally meant to drop out of 
the world. " Mr Lewknor," writes Father Gerard 
to Father Owen,^ "growing of late to a full 
resolution of entering the Society (of Jesus), and 
being so much known in England and in the 
Court as he is, so that he could not be concealed 
in the English College at Rome ; and his father, 
as he considered, being morally sure to lose his 
place,^ which is worth unto him ^looo a year, 
he therefore will come privately to Liege, where 
I doubt not but to keep him wholly unknown." 

^ 19th September 1614. Quoted in C. Dodd's Church History of 
England, ed. Tierney, vol. iv. Appendix, p. ccxli. 
2 Master of Ceremonies to James I. 



100 



Chapter V 

THE INFLUENCE OF THE FRENCH 
ACADEMIES 

THE admonitions of their elders did not 
keep young men from going to Italy, 
but as the seventeenth century advanced 
the conditions they found there made that country 
less attractive than France. The fact that the 
average Englishman was a Protestant divided 
him from his compeers in Italy and damped social 
intercourse. He was received courteously and 
formally by the Italian princes, perhaps, for the 
sake of his political uncle or cousin in England, 
but inner distrust and suspicion blighted any real 
friendship. Unless the Englishman was one of 
those who had a secret, half - acknowledged 
allegiance to Romanism, there could not, in the 
age of the Puritans, be much comfortable affection 
between him and the Italians. The beautiful 
youth, John Milton, as the author of excellent 
Latin verse, was welcomed into the literary life 
of Florence, to be sure, and there were other 
unusual cases, but the typical traveller of Stuart 
times was the young gentleman who was sent 
to France to learn the graces, with a view to 
making his fortune at Court, even as his widowed 

lOI 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

mother sent George Villiers, afterwards Duke of 
Buckingham. The EngUshmen who travelled 
for " the complete polishing of their parts " con- 
tinued to visit Italy, to satisfy their curiosity, but 
it was rather in the mood of the sight-seer. Only 
malcontents, at odds with their native land, like 
Bothwell, or the Earl of Arundel, or Leicester's 
disinherited son, made prolonged residence in 
Italy. Aspiring youth, seeking a social education, 
for the most part hurried to France. 

For it was not only a sense of being surrounded 
by enemies which during the seventeenth century 
somewhat weakened the Englishman's allegiance 
to Italy, but the increasing attractiveness of 
another country. By 1 6 1 6 it was said of France 
that " Unto no other countrie, so much as unto 
this, doth swarme and flow yearly from all 
Christian nations, such a multitude, and concourse 
of young Gentlemen, Marchants, and other sorts 
of men : some, drawen from their Parentes bosoms 
by desire of learning ; some, rare Science, or new 
conceites ; some by pleasure ; and others allured 
by lucre and gain. . . . But among all other 
Nations, there cometh not such a great multitude 
to Fraunce from any Country, as doth yearely 
from this Isle (England), both of Gentlemen, 
Students, Marchants, and others." ^ 

1 The Reformed Travailer, by W. H., 1616, fol. A 4, verso. 
102 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

Held in peace by Henry of Navarre, France 
began to be a happier place than Italy for the 
Englishman abroad. Germany was impossible, 
because of the Thirty Years' War ; and Spain, 
for reasons which we shall see later on, was not 
inviting. Though nominally Roman Catholic, 
France was in fact half Protestant. Besides, the 
French Court was great and gay, far outshining 
those of the impoverished Italian princes. It suited 
the gallants of the Stuart period, who found the 
grave courtesy of the Italians rather slow. Learn- 
ing, for which men once had travelled into Italy, 
was no longer confined there. Nor did the 
Cavaliers desire exact classical learning. A know- 
ledge of mythology, culled from French transla- 
tions, was sufficient. Accomplishments, such as 
riding, fencing, and dancing, were what chiefly 
helped them, it appeared, to make their way at 
Court or at camp. And the best instruction in 
these accomplishments had shifted from Italy to 
France. 

A change had come over the ideal of a gentle- 
man — a reaction from the Tudor enthusiasm for 
letters. A long time had gone by since Henry VIII. 
tried to make his children as learned as Erasmus, 
and had the most erudite scholars fetched from 
Oxford and Cambridge to direct the royal nursery. 
The somewhat moderated esteem in which book- 

103 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

learning was held in the household of Charles I. 
may be seen in a letter of the Earl of Newcastle, 
governor to Prince Charles,^ who writes to his 
pupil : 

" I would not have you too studious, for too 
much contemplation spoils action, and Virtue 
consists in that." The Prince's model is to be the 
Bishop of Chichester, his tutor, who " hath no 
pedantry in him : his learning he makes right use 
of, neither to trouble himself with it or his friends: 
. . . reades men as well as books : ... is 
travell'd, which you shall perceive by his wisdome 
and fashion more than by his relations ; and in a 
word strives as much discreetly to hide the scholler 
in him, as other men's follies studies to shew it : 
and is a right gentleman." ^ 

Of pedantry, however, there never seems to 
have been any danger in Court circles, either in 
Tudor or Stuart days. It took constant exhorta- 
tions to make the majority of noblemen's sons 
learn anything at all out of books. For centuries 
the marks of a gentleman had been bravery, 
courtesy and a good seat in the saddle, and it was 
not to be supposed that a sudden fashionable 
enthusiasm for literature could change all that. 
Ascham had declared that the Elizabethan young 

1 Charles II. 

2 Ellis, Original Letters, ist Series, iii. 288. 

104 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

bloods thought it shameful to be learned because 
the " Jentlemen of France " were not so.^ When 
with the general relaxation of high effort which 
appeared in so many ways at the Court of James I., 
the mastery of Greek authors was no longer 
an ideal of the courtier, the Jacobean gallant was 
hardly more intellectual than the medieval page. 
Henry Peacham, in 1623, described noblemen's 
flagging faith in a university education. They 
sent their sons to Oxford or Cambridge at an 
early age, and if the striplings did not immediately 
lay hold on philosophy, declared that they had no 
aptitude for learning, and removed them to a 
dancing school. " These young things," as he 
calls the Oxford students "of twelve, thirteene, 
or foureteene, that have no more care than to 
expect the next Carrier, and where to sup on 
Fridayes and Fasting nights" lind "such a dis- 
proportion betweene Aristotles Categories, and 
their childish capacities, that what together with 
the sweetnesse of libertie, varietie of companie, 
and so many kinds of recreation in towne and 
fields abroad," they give over any attempt to 
understand " the crabbed grounds of Arts." 
Whereupon, the parents, " if they perceive any 
wildnesse or unstayednesse in their children, are 
presently in despaire, and out of all hope of them 

1 The Scholemaster^ ed. Mayor, p. 53. 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

for ever prooving Schollers, or fit for anything 
else ; neither consider the nature of youth, nor the 
effect of time, the Physitian of all. But to mend 
the matter, send them either to the Court to 
serve as Pages, or into France and Italy to see 
fashions, and mend their manners, where they 
become ten times worse." ^ 

The influence of France would not be towards 
books, certainly. Brave, gallant, and magnificent 
were the Gallic gentlemen ; but not learned. 
Reading made them positively ill : " la tete leur 
tourne de lire," as Breze confessed.^ Scorning an 
indoor sedentary life, they left all civil offices to the 
bourgeoisie, and devoted themselves exclusively to 
war. As the Vicomte D'Avenel has crisply put it: 

" It would have seemed as strange to see a 
person of high rank the Treasurer of France, the 
Controller of Finance, or the Rector of a Univer- 
sity, as it would be to see him a cloth-merchant 
or maker of crockery. . . . The poorest younger 
son of an ancient family, who would not disdain 
to engage himself as a page to a nobleman, or 
as a common soldier, would have thought himself 
debased by accepting the post of secretary to an 
ambassador," ^ 

1 The Compkat Gentleman, 1634 (reprint 1906), p. 33. 

2 Cited in G. D'Avenel, La Noblesse frangaise sous Richelieu, p. 52. 

3 Hid., pp. 41-2. 

io6 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

Brute force was still considered the greatest 
power in the world, even when Sully was Con- 
seiller d'Etat, though divining spirits like Eustache 
Deschamps had declared that the day would come 
when serving-men would rule France by their 
wits, all because the noblesse would not learn 
letters.^ In vain the wise Bras-de-Fer warned 
his generation that glory and strength of limb 
were of short duration, while knowledge was the 
only immortal quality." As long as parents saw 
that the honours at Court went to handsome 
horsemen, they thought it mistaken policy to 
waste money on book-learning for their sons. 
When a boy came from the university to Court, 
he found himself eclipsed by young pages, who 
Scarcely knew how to read, but had killed their 
man in a duel, and danced to perfection.^ A 
martial training, with physical accomplishments, 
was the most effective, apparently. 

The martial type which France evolved dazzled 
other nations, and it is not surprising that under 
the Stuarts, who had inherited French ways, the 
English Court was particularly open to French 
ideals. Our directions for travellers reflect the 

^ Balade, " Les chevaliers ont honte d'etudier " [CEuvres Com- 
pletes, tome iii. p. 187). 

- De la Noue, Discours Politiques el Militaires, 1587, p. ill. 

■^ De la Nouc, op. cit., pp. 1 18-22. Court and Times 0/ Charles /., 
vol', ii. pp. 89, 187. 

107 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

change from the typical Elizabethan courtier, 
" somewhat solemn, coy, big and dangerous of 
look," to the easy manners of the cavalier. A 
Method for Travell^ written while Elizabeth was 
still on the throne, extols Italian conduct. " I 
would rather," it says of the traveller, " he should 
come home Italianate than Frenchified : I speake 
of both in the better sense : for the French is 
stirring, bold, respectless, inconstant, suddaine : 
the Italian stayed, demure, respective, grave, 
advised." ^ But Instructions for Forreine Travel! 
in 1 642 urges one to imitate the French. " For 
the Gentry of France have a kind of loose, be- 
coming boldness, and forward vivacity in their 
manners." ^ 

The first writer of advice to travellers who 
assumes that French accomplishments are to be 
a large part of the traveller's education, is Sir 
Robert Dallington, whom we have already quoted. 
His View of France} to which the Method 
for Travell is prefixed, deserves a reprint, for 
both that and his Survey of Tuscany} though 
built on the regular model of the Elizabethan 
traveller's " Relation," being a conscientious 

^ ji Method for Travell. Shelved by takitig the vieiu of France. 
As it stood in the yeare of our Lord, 1598. 

2 By James Howell. ^ Supra, note (i). 

^ A Survey of the Great Dukes State of Tuscany. In the yeare oj 
our Lord, I 596. 

108 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

account of the chief geographical, economic, archi- 
tectural, and social features of the country tra- 
versed, are more artistic than the usual formal 
reports. Dallington wrote these Views in 1598, 
a little before the generation which modelled 
itself on the French gallants, and his remarks on 
Frenchmen may well have served as a warning to 
courtiers not to imitate the foibles, along with the 
admirable qualities, of their compeers across the 
Channel. For instance, he is outraged by the 
effusiveness of the " violent, busy-headed and 
impatient Frenchman," who " showeth his light- 
ness and inconstancie ... in nothing more than 
in his familiaritie, with whom a stranger cannot 
so soone be off his horse, but he will be ac- 
quainted : nor so soone in his Chamber, but the 
other like an Ape will bee on his shoulder : and 
as suddenly and without cause ye shall love him 
also. A childish humour, to be wonne with as 
little as an Apple and lost with lesse than a Nut." ^ 
The King of France himself is censured for his 
geniality. Dallington deems Henry of Navarre 
" more affable and familiar than fits the Majesty 
of a great King." He might have found in 
current gossip worse lapses than the two he quotes 
to show Henry's lack of formality, but it is part 
of Dallington's worth that he writes of things at 

1 The Vieiv of France^ fol. X. 

109 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

first-hand, and gives us only what he himself 
saw ; how at Orleans, when the Italian corn- 
medians were to play before him, the king 
himself, " came whiffling with a small wand to 
scowre the coast, and make place for the rascall 
Players, ... a thing, me thought, most deroga- 
tory to the Majesty of a King of France." 

" And lately at Paris (as they tell us) when the 
Spanish Hostages were to be entertayned, he did 
Usher it in the great Chamber, as he had done here 
before ; and espying the Chayre not to stand well 
under the State, mended it handsomely himselfe, 
and then set him downe to give them audience."^ 

Nor can Dallington conceal his disapproval of 
foreign food. The sorrows of the beef-eating 
Englishman among the continentals were always 
poignant. Dallington is only one of the many 
travellers who, unable to grasp the fact that warmer 
climes called for light diet, reproached the Italians 
especially for their " parsimony and thin feeding." 
In Henry the Eighth's time there was already a 
saying among the Italians, " Give the Englishman 
his beef and mustard,"^ while the English in turn 
jibed at the Italians for being " like Nebuchad- 
nezzar, — always picking of sallets." " Herbage," 
says Dallington scornfully " is the most generall 

1 The Vteiv of France, fol. H 4, verso. 

2 William Thomas, The Pilgrim, 1546. 

I 10 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

food of the Tuscan . . . for every horse-load of flesh 
eaten, there is ten cart loades of hearbes and rootes, 
which also their open Markets and private tables 
doe witnesse, and w^hereof if one talke vvrith them 
fasting, he shall have sencible feeling." ^ The 
whole subject of diet he dismisses in his advice to 
a traveller as follows : " As for his viands I feare 
not his surfetting ; his provision is never so great, 
but ye may let him loose to his allowance. ... I 
shall not need to tell him before what his dyet 
shall be, his appetite will make it better than it 
is : for he shall be still kept sharpe : only of the 
difference of dyets, he shall observe thus much : 
that of Germanie is full or rather fulsome; that 
of France allowable ; that of Italic tolerable ; 
with the Dutch he shall have much meat ill- 
dressed : with the French lesse, but well handled ; 
with the Italian neither the one nor the other." ^ 

Though there is much in Dallington's description 
of Italy and France to repay attention, our concern 
is with his Method for Travell} which, though 
more practical than the earlier Elizabethan essays 

^ Survey of Tuscany, p. 34. 

2 u4 Method for Travell, Fol. B 4, verso. 

^ The first edition oi The F^ieiu 0/ Fraunce "was printed anonymously 
in 1 604 by Symon Stafford : When Thomas Creede brought out 
another edition, apparently in 1606, Dallington inserted a preface 
"To All Gentlemen that have Travelled," and ^ Method for 
Travel/, consisting of eight unpaged leaves, and a folded leaf containing 
a conspectus of -^ Method for Travell. 

Ill 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

of the same sort, opens in the usual style of 
exhortation : 

" Plato, one of the day-starres of that know- 
ledge, which then but dawning hath since shone 
out in clearer brightness, thought nothing better 
for the bettering our understanding then Travell: 
as well by having a conference with the wiser 
sort in all sorts of learning, as by the A'vToxjjiarj. 
The eye-sight of those things, which otherwise a 
man cannot have but by Tradition ; A Sandy 
foundation either in matter of Science, or Con- 
science. So that a purpose to Travell, if it be 
not ad voluptatem Solum, sed ad utilitatem, 
argueth an industrious and generous minde. Base 
and vulgar spirits hover still about home : those 
are more noble and divine, that imitate the 
Heavens, and joy in motion." 

After a warning against Jesuits, which we have 
quoted, he comes at once to definite directions 
for studying modern languages ^ — advice which 
though sound is hardly novel. Continual speak- 

1 As the use of Latin waned, a knowledge of modern languages 
became Increasingly important. The attitude of continental gentlemen 
on this point is indicated by a Spanish Ambassador in 1613, to whom 
the Pope's Nuncio used a German Punctilio, of speaking Latin, for 
more dignity, to him and Italian to the Residents of Mantua and 
Urbino. The Ambassador answered in Italian, " and afterwards gave 
this reason for it : that it were as ill a Decorum for a Cavalier to 
speak Latin, as for a Priest to use any other Language" ( IVmiuood 
Memorials, vol. iii. p. 446). 

I 12 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

ing with all sorts of people, insisting that his 
teacher shall not do all the talking, and avoiding 
his countrymen are unchangeable rules for him 
who shall travel for language.^ But this is the 
first treatise for travellers which makes note 
of dancing as an important accomplishment. 
" There's another exercise to be learned in France, 
because there are better teachers, and the French 
fashion is in most request with us, that is, of 
dancing. This I meane to my Traveller that is 
young and meanes to follow the Court : other- 
wise I hold it needelesse, and in some ridiculous." ^ 
This art was indeed essential to courtiers, and a 
matter of great earnestness. Chamberlain reports 
that Sir Henry Bowyer died of the violent 
exercise he underwent while practising dancing.^ 
Henri III. fell into a tearful passion and called 
the Grand Prieur a liar, a poltroon, and a villain, 
at a ball, because the Grand Prieur was heard to 

1 Fynes Moryson had a great deal to say on this subject. In 
particular, he instances the Germans as reprehensible in living only 
with their own countrymen in Italy, " never attaining the perfect use 
of any forreigne Language, be it never so easy. So as myselfe 
remember one of them, who being reprehended, that having been 
thirty yeeres in Italy hee could not speake the Language, he did 
merrily answer in Dutch : Ah lieber was lean man doch in dreissig 
Jahr lehrnen : Alas, good Sir, what can a man learne in thirty 
yeeres?" {^li'tnerary, vol. iii. p. 379). 

2 j4 Method for Travell, B 4, verso. 

^ Court and Times of James J., vol. i. p. 286. 

H 113 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

mutter " Unless you dance better, I would you 
had your money again that your dancing has 
cost you." ^ James I. was particularly anxious to 
have his " Babies " excel in complicated bound- 
ings. His copy of Nuove Invent'ioni di Balli ^ 
may be seen in the British Museum, with large 
plates illustrating how to " gettare la gamba," that 
is, in the words of Chaucer, " with his legges casten 
to and fro." ^ Prince Henry was skilful in these 
matters. The Spanish Ambassador reports how 
*' The Prince of Wales was desired by his royal 
parents to open the ball with a Spanish gallarda : he 
acquitted himself with much grace and delicacy, in- 
troducing some occasional leaps." * Prince Charles 
and Buckingham, during their stay in Spain, are 
earnestly implored by their "deare Dad and 
Gossip " not to forget their dancing. " I praye 
you, my babie, take heade of being hurt if ye 
runne at tilte, ... I praye you in the meantyme 
keep your selfis in use of dawncing privatlie, 
thogh ye showlde quhissell and sing one to 

1 Amias Paulet to Elizabeth, Jan. 31, 1577. Cal. State Papers, 
Foreign. 

* By Cesare Nigri Milanese detto il trombone, " Famose e eccellente 
Professori di Ballare." Printed at Milan, 1604. 

^ " In twenty manere coude he trippe and dance 

After the schole of Oxenforde the. 
And with his legges casten to and fro." 

The Miller es Tale, II. 142-4. 

* Ellis, Original Lettert, 2nd Series, vol. iii. p. 21 4. 

114 




DANCIXG 

Au illustration from " Nuotc lii7<ciitione di Balli," an Italian book of instructions 
in dancing, much prized l>y James I 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

another like Jakke and Tom for faulte of better 
musike." ^ 

However, Dallington is very much against the 
saltations of elderly persons. " I remember a 
countriman of ours, well seene in artes and 
language, well stricken in yeares, a mourner for 
his second wife, a father of mariageable children, 
who with his other booke studies abroade, joyned 
also the exercise of dancing : it was his hap in an 
honourable Bal (as they call it) to take a fall, 
which in mine opinion was not so disgracefull as 
the dancing it selfe, to a man of his stuffe." ^ 

Dallington would have criticized Frenchmen 

more severely than ever had he known that even 

Sully gave way in private to a passion for 

dancing. At least Tallemant des Reaux says that 

" every evening a valet de chambre of the King 

played on the lute the dances of the day, and 

M. de Sully danced all alone, in some sort of 

extraordinary hat — such as he always wore in 

his cabinet — while his cronies applauded him, 

although he was the most awkward man in the 
world." 3 

Tennis is another courtly exercise in which 
Dallington urges moderation. "This is dangerous, 

1 Ibid., 1st Series, vol. iii. pp. 138-9. 

2 yl Method Jor Traveil, fol. B 4, verso. 

^ Historlettes, ed. Paris, 1834, tome ler, p. 72. 

"5 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

(if used with too much violence) for the body ; 
and (if followed with too much diligence,) for the 
purse. A maine point of the Travellers care." 
He reached France when the rage for tennis was 
at its height, — when there were two hundred and 
fifty tennis courts in Paris,i — and " two tennis 
courts for every one Church through France," 
according to his computation.^ Everyone was 
at it ; — nobles, artizans, women, and children. 
The monks had had to be requested not to play 
— especially, the edict said, " not in public in 
their shirts." ^ Our Englishman, of course, 
thought this enthusiasm was beyond bounds. " Ye 
have seene them play Sets at Tennise in the heat 
of Summer and height of the day, when others 
were scarcely able to stirre out of doors." Betting 
on the game was the ruin of the working-man, 
who " spendeth that on the Holyday, at Tennis, 
which hee got the whole weeke, for the keeping 
of his poore family. A thing more hurtfull then 
our Ale-houses in England." * 

" There remains two other exercises," says the 
Method for Travel!^ " of use and necessitie, to 

^ So counted the Pope's Legate in 1596. Cited by Jusserand, in 
Sports et Jeux D^ Exercise dans U ancienne France^ p. 252. 

2 A Vienv of France^ fol. V, verso. 

^ Jusserand, op. clt., p. 241. Cited from Thomassin's Ancienne 
et nouvelle discipline de I' EgUse, 1725, tome iii. col. 1355. 

* The Vieiv of France, T 4, verso, V, verso. 

u6 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

him that will returne ably quallified for his 
countries service in w^arre, and his owne defence 
in private quarrell. These are Riding and Fencing. 
His best place for the first (excepting Naples) is 
in Florence under il Signor Rustico, the great 
Dukes Cavallerizzo, and for the second (excepting 
Rome) is in Padua, under il Sordo." ^ Italy, it 
may be observed, was still the best school for 
these accomplishments. Pluvinel was soon to make 
a world-renowned riding academy in Paris, but 
the art of fencing was more slowly disseminated. 
One was still obliged, like Captain Bobadil, to 
make " long travel for knowledge, in that mystery 
only." - Brantome says the fencing masters of 
Italy kept their secrets in their own hands, giving 
their services only on the condition that you 
should never reveal what you had learnt even to 
your dearest friends. Some instructors would 
never allow a living soul in the room where they 
were giving lessons to a pupil. And even then 
they used to keek everywhere, under the beds, 
and examine the wall to see if it had any crack 
or hole through which a person could peer.'^ 
Dallington makes no further remark on the sub- 
ject, however, than the above, and after some 

1 Fol. C. 

2 Every Man in his Humour, Act IV. Sc. v. 
"* Touchant Us Duels, ed. 1722, p. 79. 

117 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

advice about money matters, which we will men- 
tion in another connection, and a warning to the 
traveller that his apparel must be in fashion — for 
the fashions change with trying rapidity, and 
the French were very scornful of anyone who 
appeared in a last year's suit ^ — he brings to a close 
one of the pithiest essays in our collection. 

When the influence of France over the ideals of 
a gentleman was well established, James Howell 
wrote his Instructions for Forreine Travell^ and 
in this book for the first time the traveller is advised 
to stay at one of the French academies — or riding 
schools, as they really were. 

His is the best known, probably, of all our 
treatises, partly because it was reprinted a little 
while ago by Mr Gosse, and partly because of its 
own merits. Howell had an easier, more indul- 
gent outlook upon the world than Dallington, and 
could see all nations with equal humour — his 
own included. Take his comparison of the 
Frenchman and the Spaniard. 

The Frenchman " will dispatch the weightiest 
affairs as hee walke along in the streets, or at 

1 " If in the Court they spie one in a sute of the last yeres making, 
they scoffingly say, ' Nous le cognoissons bien, il ne nous mordra pas, 
c'est un fruit suranne.' We know him well enough, he will not 
hurt us, hee's an Apple of the last yeere " {The Vieiv of France^ 
fol. T 4). 

^ Instructions for Forreine Travell, 1642. 

118 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

meales, the other upon the least occasion of 
businesse will retire solemnly to a room, and if a fly- 
chance to hum about him, it will discompose his 
thoughts and puzzle him : It is a kind of sicknesse 
for a Frenchman to keep a secret long, and all the 
drugs of Egypt cannot get it out of a Spaniard. 

. The Frenchman walks fast, (as if he had a 
Sergeant always at his heels,) the Spaniard slowly, 
as if hee were newly come out of some quartan 
Ague ; the French go up and down the streets con- 
fusedly in clusters, the Spaniards if they be above 
three, they go two by two, as if they were going a 
Procession ; etc. etc." ^ 

With the same humorous eye he observes the 
Englishmen returned to London from Paris, 
" whom their gate and strouting, their bending in 
the hammes, and shoulders, and looking upon 
their legs, with frisking and singing do speake 
them Travellers. . . . Some make their return in 
huge monstrous Periwigs, which is the Golden 
Fleece they bring over with them. Such, I say, 
are a shame to their Country abroad, and their 
kinred at home, and to their parents, Benonies, 
the sons of sorrow : and as Jonas in the Whales 
belly, travelled much, but saw little." ^ 

These are some of the advantages an English- 
man will reap from foreign travel : 

^Op. cit., pp. 65-70. ^ Wtd., pp. 181, 1 88. 

119 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

" One shall learne besides there not to inter- 
rupt one in the relation of his tale, or to feed it 
with odde interlocutions : One shall learne also 
not to laugh at his own jest, as too many used to 
do, like a Hen, which cannot lay an egge but she 
must cackle. 

" Moreover, one shall learne not to ride so furi- 
ously as they do ordinarily in England, when there 
is no necessity at all for it ; for the Italians have a 
Proverb, that a galloping horse is an open sepul- 
cher. And the English generally are observed 
by all other Nations, to ride commonly with that 
speed as if they rid for a midwife, or a Physitian, 
or to get a pardon to save one's life as he goeth to 
execution, when there is no such thing, or any 
other occasion at all, which makes them call 
England the Hell of Horses. 

" In these hot Countreyes also, one shall learne 
to give over the habit of an odde custome, peculiar 
to the English alone, and whereby they are dis- 
tinguished from other Nations, which is, to make 
still towards the chimney, though it bee in the 
Dog-dayes." ^ 

We need not comment in detail upon Howell's 
book since it is so accessible. The passage which 
chiefly marks the progress of travel for study's 
sake is this : 

1 Op. at., pp. 193-5. 
120 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

" For private Gentlemen and Cadets, there be 
divers Academies in Paris, Colledge-like, w^here for 
150 pistols a Yeare, which come to about £iS^ 
sterHng per annum of our money, one may be 
very w^ell accomodated, with lodging and diet for 
himself and man, and be taught to Ride, to Fence, 
to manage Armes, to Dance, Vault, and ply the 
Mathematiques." ^ 

These academies were one of the chief attractions 
which France had for the gentry of England in the 
seventeenth century. The first one was founded 
by Pluvinel, the grand ecuyer of Henri IV. 
Pluvinel, returning from a long apprenticeship 
to Pignatelli in Naples, made his own riding- 
school the best in the world, so that the French 
no longer had to journey to Italian masters. He 
obtained from the king the basement of the 
great gallery of the Louvre, and there taught 
Louis XIII. and other young nobles of the Court — 
amongst them the Marquis du Chillon, afterwards 
Cardinal Richelieu — to ride the great horse.^ 
Such was the success of his manege that he 
1/^/^., p. 51. 

^ " The Great Horse " is the term used of animals for war or 
tournaments, in contradistinction to Palfreys, Coursers, Nags, and 
other common horses. These animals of "prodigious weight" had 
to be taught to perform manoeuvres, and their riders, the art of manag- 
ing them according to certain rules and principles. See A Netu 
Method . . . to Dress Horses, by William Cavendish, Duke of New- 
castle, London, 1667. 

121 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

annexed masters to teach his pupils dancing, 
vaulting, and swordsmanship, as well as drawing 
and mathematics, till he had rounded out what was 
considered a complete education for a chevalier. 
In imitation of his establishment, many other 
riding-masters, such as Benjamin, Potrincourt, and 
Nesmond, set up others of the same sort, which 
drew pupils from other nations during all the 
seventeenth century.^ In the suburb of Pre-aux- 
clercs, says Malingre in 1 640, " are several 
academies where the nobility learn to ride. The 
most frequented is that of M. de Mesmon, where 
there is a prince of Denmark and one of the 
princes palatine of the Rhine, and a quantity of 
other foreign gentlemen." ^ 

Englishmen found the academies very useful 
retreats where a boy could learn French accomplish- 
ments without incurring the dangers of foreign 
travel and make the acquaintance of young nobles 
of his own age. Mr Thomas Lorkin writing 
from Paris in 16 10, outlines to the tutor of the 
Prince of Wales the routine of his pupil Mr 
Puckering'^ at such an establishment. The morn- 

^ Huto'tre et Recherches des Ant'tquites de la V'tlle de Paris, par 
H. Sauval, Paris, 1724, tome ii. p. 498. 

^ Les ylntiqmte% de la V'tlle de Paris. Paris 1 640, Livre second, 

P- 403- 

^ Probably the son of Sir John Puckering, Lord Keeper in 1 592- 
1596. 

122 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

ing began with two hours on horseback, followed 
by two hours at the French tongue, and one hour 
in " learning to handle his weapon." Dinner 
was at twelve o'clock, where the company con- 
tinued together till two, " either passing the time in 
discourse or in some honest recreation perteyning 
to armes." At two the bell rang for dancing, and 
at three another gong sent the pupil to his own 
room with his tutor, to study Latin and French for 
two hours. " After supper a brief survey of all."^ 
It will be seen that there was an exact balance 
between physical and mental exercise — four hours 
of each. All in all, academies seemed to be the 
solution of preparing for life those who were 
destined to shine at Court. The problem had 
been felt in England, as well as in France. In 
1 56 1, Sir Nicholas Bacon had devised "Articles 
for the bringing up in virtue and learning of the 
Oueens Majesties Wardes." ^ Lord Burghley is 
said to have propounded the creation of a school 
of arms and exercises.'^ In 1570, Sir Humphrey 
Gilbert drew up an elaborate proposal for an 
" Academy of philosophy and chivalry," * but 

1 Ellis, Original Letters, 2nd Series, vol. iii. pp. 220-1. 

"^ Archxologia, vol. xxxvi. pp. 343-4. 

^ Collectania, First Series, ed. for the Oxford Historical Society 
(vol. V.) by C. R. L. Fletcher, p. 213. 

* See Archaologia, xxi. p. 506. Gilbert's and La Nouc's dreams 
were of academies like Vittorino da Feltre's — not Pluvinel's. 

123 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

none of these plans was carried out. Nor was 
that of Prince Henry, who had also wanted to 
establish a Royal Academy or School of Arms, 
in which all the king's wards and others should 
be educated and exercised.^ A certain Sir Francis 
Kinaston, esquire of the body to Charles I., " more 
addicted to the superficiall parts of learning — poetry 
and oratory (wherein he excell'd) — than to logic 
and philosophy," Wood says, did get a licence to 
erect an academy in his house in Covent Garden, 
" which should be for ever a college for the 
education of the young nobility and others, sons 
of gentlemen, and should be styled the Musaeum 
Minervae." ^ But whatever start was made in 
that direction ended with the Civil War. 

However, the idea of setting up in England 
the sort of academy which was successful in 
France was such an obvious one that it kept 
constantly recurring. In 1649 ^ courtly parasite, 
Sir Balthazar Gerbier, who used to be a miniature 
painter, an art-critic, and Master of Ceremonies 
to Charles I., being sadly thrown out of occupa- 
tion by the Civil War, opened an academy at 
Bethnal Green. There are still in existence his 
elaborate advertisements of its attractions, addressed 
to " All Fathers of Noble Families and Lovers ot 



1 Oxford Historical Society, vol. v. p. 276. 

2 Ibid., pp. 280-2. 



124 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

Vertue," and proposing his school as " a meanes, 
whereby to free them of such charges as they are 
at, when they send their children to foreign 
academies, and to render them more knowing in 
those languages, without exposing them to the 
dangers incident to travellers, and to that of evill 
companies, or of giving to forrain parts the glory 
of their education." ^ But Gerbier was a flimsy 
character, and without a Court to support him, or 
money, his academy dissolved after a gaseous 
lecture or two. Faubert, however, another French 
Protestant refugee, was more successful with an 
academy he managed to set up in London in 
1682, "to lessen the vast expense the nation is 
at yearly by sending children into France to be 
taught military exercises." '^ Evelyn, who was a 
patron of this enterprise, describes how he " went 
with Lord Cornwallis to see the young gallants 
do their exercise, Mr Faubert having newly 
railed in a manege, and fitted it for the academy. 
There were the Dukes of Norfolk and Northum- 
berland, Lord Newburgh, and a nephew of 
(Duras) Earl of Feversham. . . . But the Duke of 
Norfolk told me he had not been at this exercise 
these twelve years before." ' However, Faubert's 

' The Interpreter of the Academie for Forrain Languages, and all 
Noble Sciences, and Exercises, London, 1648. 
- Evelyn's Diary, 9th August 1682. 
3 Ibid., 1 8th December 1684. 

125 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

could not have been an important institution, 
since in 1700, a certain Dr Maidwell tried to get 
the Government to convert a great house of his 
near Westminster into a public academy of the 
French sort, as a greatly needed means of rearing 
gentlemen.^ 

But all these efforts to educate English boys 
on the lines of French ones came to nothing, 
because at the close of the seventeenth century 
Englishmen began to realize that it was not wise 
for a gentleman to confine himself to a military 
life. As to riding as a fine art, his practical mind 
felt that it was all very well to amuse oneself in 
Paris by learning to make a war-horse caracole, 
but there w^as no use in taking such things too 
seriously ; that in war " a ruder way of riding was 
more in use, without observing the precise rules of 
riding the great horse." ^ He could not feel that 
artistic passion for form in horsemanship which 
breathes from the pages of PluvineFs book Le 
Maneige Royal^ in which magnificent engrav- 
ings show Louis XIII. making courbettes, voltes, 

1 Oxford Historical Society, vol. v. pp. 309-13. 

2 Ibid., p. 319. 

^ Le Maneige Royal, ou I'on peut remarquer le defaut et la per- 
fection du chevalier ,en tous les exercices de cet art, digne de Princes, 
fait et pratique en I'instruction du Roy par Antoine Pluvinel son 
Escuyer principal, Conseiller en son Conseil d'Estat, son Chambellan 
ordinaire, et Sous-Gouverneur de sa Majeste. Paris, 1624. 

126 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

and " caprioles " around the Louvre, while a 
circle of grandees gravely discuss the deportment 
of his charger. Even Sir Philip Sidney made 
gentle fun of the hippocentric universe of his 
Italian riding master : 

" When the right vertuous Edward Wotton, and 
I, were at the Emperors Court together, wee gave 
ourselves to learne horsemanship of John Pietro 
Pugliano : one that with great commendation had 
the place of an esquire in his stable. And hee, 
according to the fertilnes of the Italian wit, did 
not onely afoord us the demonstration of his 
practise, but sought to enrich our mindes with 
the contemplations therein, which hee thought 
most precious. But with none I remember mine 
eares were at any time more loden, then when (ether 
angred with slowe paiment, or mooved with our 
learner-like admiration,) he exercised his speech in 
the prayse of his facultie. Hee sayd, Souldiers 
were the noblest estate of mankinde, and horse- 
men, the noblest of Souldiours. He sayde, they 
were the Maistres of warre, and ornaments of 
peace : speedy goers, and strong abiders, trium- 
phers both in Camps and Courts. Nay, to so 
unbeleeved a poynt hee proceeded, as that no 
earthly thing bred such wonder to a Prince, as to 
be a good horseman. Skill of government, was 
but a Pedanteria in comparison : then woulde he 

127 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

adde certaine prayses, by telling what a peerlesse 
beast a horse was. The only serviceable Courtier 
without flattery, the beast of the most beutie, 
faithfulness, courage, and such more, that if I had 
not beene a peece of a Logician before I came to 
him, I think he would have perswaded mee to 
have wished my selfe a Horse." ^ 

That this was somewhat the spirit of the 
French academies there seems no doubt. Though 
they claimed to give an equal amount of physical 
and mental exercise, they tended to the muscular 
side of the programme. Pluvinel, says Tallemant 
des Reaux, " was hardly more intelligent than his 
horses," ^ and the academies are supposed to have 
declined after his death. ^ "All that is to be 
learned in these Academies," says Clarendon, " is 
Riding, Dancing, and Fencing, besides some 
Wickednesses they do not profess to teach. It is 
true they have men there who teach Arithmetick, 
which they call Philosophy, and the Art of 
Fortification, which they call the Mathematicks ; 
but what Learning they had there, I might easily 
imagine, when he assured me, that in Three 

1 Opening words o^ An Apologie for Poetrie, ed. 1595. 

2 Historiettesy vol. i. p. 89 of ed. 1834. Marguerite of Valois 
compared M. de Souvray, the governor of Louis XIII., to Chiron 
rearing Achilles. Contemporary satire said that M. de Souvray 
*' n'avoit de Chiron que le train de derriere." 

^ Henri Sauvai, op. cit., p. 498. 

128 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

years which he had spent in the Academy, he 
never saw a Latin book nor any Master that 
taught anything there, who would not have taken 
it very ill to be suspected to speake or understand 
Latin." ^ This sort of aspersion was continued 
by Dr Wallis, the Savilian Professor of Mathe- 
matics at Oxford in 1700, who was roused to a 
fine pitch of indignation by Maidwell's efforts to 
start an academy in London : ^ 

" Of teachers in the academic, scarce any of 
a higher character than a valet-de-chambre. And, 
if such an one, who (for instance) hath waited on 
his master in one or two campagnes, and is able 
perhaps to copy the draught of a fortification from 
another paper ; this is called mathematicks ; and, 
beyond this (if so much) you are not to expect." 

A certain Mr P. Chester finishes the English 
condemnation of a school, such as Benjamin's, 
by declaring that its pretensions to fit men for 
life was " like the shearing of Hoggs, much 
Noyse and little Wooll, nothing considerable 
taught that I know, butt only to fitt a man to 

1 A Dialogue concerning Education^ in Tracts^ London, 1727, 
p. 297. We must allow for the fact that English university men did 
not approve of the French ambition to elevate the vernacular, or of 
their translation of the classics, or of any displacement of Latin from 
the highest place in the ambitions of anyone with pretentions to 
learning. See also Evelyn, State of France^ p. 99. 

2 Oxford Historical Society y vol. v. p. 325. 

I 129 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

be a French chevalier, that is in plain English a 
Trooper." ^ 

These comments are what one expects from 
Oxford, to be sure, but even M. Jusserand 
acknowledges that the academies were not centres 
of intellectual light, and quotes to prove it certain 
questions asked of a pupil put into the Bastille, 
at the demand of his father : 

"Was it not true that the Sieur Varin, his 
father, seeing that he had no inclination to study, 
had put him into the Academic Royale to there 
learn all sorts of exercises, and had there supported 
him with much expense ? 

" He admitted that his father, while his mother 
was living, had put him into the Academic Royale 
and had given him for that the necessary means, 
and paid the ordinary pension, 1600 livres a year. 

" Was it not true that after having been some 
time at the Academic Royale, he was expelled, 
having disguised girls in boys* clothes to bring 
them there ? 

" He denied it. He had never introduced into 
the school any academiste feminine : he had de- 
parted at the summons of his father, having taken 
proper leave of M. and Mme. de Poix." ^ 

1 Written to John Aubrey, between 1685-93. Quoted in Oxford 
Historical Society, vol. v. p. 295. 

2 Ravaisson, Archives de la Bastille, Paris, 1866, tome i. p. 263 ; 
cited in Sports et Jeux d'Exercice, p. 377. 

130 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

However, something of an education had to 
be provided for RoyaUst boys at the time of the 
Civil War, when Oxford was demoralized. 
Parents wandering homeless on the Continent 
were glad enough of the academies. Even the 
Stuarts tried them, though the Duke of Glou- 
cester had to be weaned from the company of 
some young French gallants, " who, being edu- 
cated in the same academy, were more familiar 
with him than was thought convenient." ^ It 
was a choice between academies or such an 
education as Edmund Verney endured in a dull 
provincial city as the sole pupil of an exiled 
Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge. But 
the effects of being reared in France, and too 
early thrown into the dissolute Courts of Europe, 
were evident at the Restoration, when Charles the 
Second and his friends returned to startle England 
with their " exceeding wildness." What else 
could be the effect of a youth spent as the Earl 
of Chesterfield records : ^ at thirteen years old a 
courtier at St Germaine : at fourteen, rid of any 
governor or tutor : at sixteen, at the academy of 
M. de Veau, he " chanced to have a quarrel with 
M. Morvay, since Captaine of the French King's 
Guards, who I hurt and disarmed in a duel." 

1 Thomas Carte, Life of James, Duke of Ormond, vol. iii. p. 635. 

2 Addit. MS. 19253 (British Museum). 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

Thereupon he left the academy and took up his 
abode at the Court of Turin. It was from Italy, 
De Gramont said, that Chesterfield brought those 
elaborate manners, and that jealousy about women, 
for which he was so notorious among the rakes 
of the Restoration.^ 

Henry Peacham's chapter " Of Travaile " ^ is 
for the most part built out of Dallington's advice, 
but it is worthy of note that in The Compleat 
Gentleman^ Spain is pressed upon the traveller's 
attention for the first time. This is, of course, 
the natural reflection of an interest in Spain due 
to the romantic adventures of Prince Charles and 
Buckingham in that country. James Howell, 
who was of their train, gives even more space 
to it in his Instructions for Forreine Travel!. 
Notwithstanding, and though Spain was, after 
1605, fairly safe for Englishmen, as a pleasure 
ground it was not popular. It was a particularly 
uncomfortable and expensive country; hardly 
improved from the time — (1537) — when Clenar- 
dus, weary with traversing deserts on his way to 
the University of Salamanca, after a sparse meal 
of rabbit, sans wine, sans water, composed himself 
to sleep on the floor of a little hut, with nothing 
to pillow his head on except his three negro 



1 Memoires du Comte de Grammont, Strawberry Hill, 1772. 

2 In The Compleat Gentleman, 1622. 



132 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

grooms, and exclaimed, " O misera Lusltania, 
beat! qui non viderunt." ^ All civilization was 
confined to the few large cities, to reach which 
one was obliged to traverse tedious, hot, barren, 
and unprofitable wastes, in imminent danger of 
robbers, and in certainty of the customs officers, 
who taxed people for everything, even the clothes 
they had on. None escaped. Henry the Eighth's 
Ambassador complained loudly and frantically of 
the outrage to a person in his office.^ So did 
Elizabeth's Ambassador. But the officers said 
grimly "that if Christ or Sanct Fraunces came 
with all their flock they should not escape." ^ If 
the preliminary discomforts from customs-officers 
put travellers into an ill mood at once against 
Spain, the inns confirmed them in it. " In some 
places there is but the cask of a House, with a 
little napery, but sometimes no beds at all for 
Passengers in the Ventas — or Lodgings on the 
King's high-way, where if passengers meet, they 
must carry their Knapsacks well provided of what 
is necessary : otherwise they may go to bed 

1 Nicolaus Clenardus Latomo Suo S.D., Epistola^ Antverpiae, 
1566, pp. 20-4, passim. See p. 234 for the historic incident of 
the drinking cup, broken by Vasaeus, and so impossible to replace, after 
a search through the whole Spanish village, that the rest of the party 
were obliged to drink out of their hands. As to expenses, Clenardus 
scoffs at the poets who sing of " Auriferum Tagum." " Aurum 
auferendum " would better express it, he found, 

2 Ellis, Original Letters, 2nd Series, vol. ii. p. 3^. ^ Ibid. 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

supperless." ^ The Comtesse d'Aunoy grumbles 
that it was impossible to warm oneself at the 
kitchen-fire without being choked, for there was 
no chimney. Besides the room was full of men 
and women, " blacker than Devils and clad like 
Beggars . . . always some of *em impudently 
grating on a sorry Guitar." ^ Even the large cities 
were not diverting, for though they were handsome 
enough and could show " certain massie and solid 
Braveries," yet they had few of the attractions of 
urban life. The streets were so ill-paved that the 
horses splashed water into one's carriage at every 
step.^ A friend warned Tobie Matthew that 
" In the Cities you shall find so little of the 
Italian delicacie for the manner of their buildings, 
the cleannesse and sweetnesse of their streets, their 
way of living, their entertainments for recreations 
by Villas, Gardens, Walks, Fountains, Aca- 
demies, Arts of Painting, Architecture and the 
like, that you would rather suspect that they did 
but live together for fear of wolves." ^ 

1 James Howell, A Discours or Dialog, containing a Perambulation 
of Spain and Portugall which may serve for a direction how to travell 
through both Countreys, London, 1662. 

2 Relation du Voyage d^ Espagne, a la Haye, 1691 (translated in 
1692 under the title of "The Ingenious and Diverting Letters of the 
Lady Travels into Spain "). 

3 Comtesse d' Aunoy, op. cit., p. 99. 

4 Reprinted in The Life of Sir Tobie Matthew, by A. H. Mathew^ 
p. 115. 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

How little the solemnity of the Spanish nobles 
pleased English courtiers used to the boisterous 
ways of James I. and his " Steenie," may be 
gathered from The Perambulation of Spain} 
" You must know," says the first character in 
that dialogue, " that there is a great deal of 
gravity and state in the Catholic Court, but little 
noise, and few people ; so that it may be call'd 
a Monastery, rather than a Royal Court." The 
economy in such a place was a great source of 
grievance. " By this means the King of Spain 
spends not much," says the second character. 
" So little," is the reply, " that I dare wager the 
French King spends more in Pages and Laquays, 
than he of Spain among all his Court Attendants." 
Buckingham's train jeered at the abstemious fare 
they received.^ It was in such irritating contrast 
to the lofty airs of those who provided it. " We 
are still extream poor," writes the English Am- 
bassador about the Court of Madrid, " yet as 
proud as Divells, yea even as rich Divells." ^ 
Not only at Court, but everywhere, Spaniards 
were indifferent to strangers, and not at all 
interested in pleasing them. Lord Clarendon 
remarks that in Madrid travellers "will find less 
delight to reside than in any other Place to 

1 By James Howell, 1662. 

2 Howell's Letters^ ed. Jacobs, p. 168. 
^ Winiuood Memorials^ vol. iii. p. 264. 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

which we have before commended them : for that 
Nation having less Reverence for meer Travellers, 
who go Abroad, without Business, are not at all 
solicitous to provide for their Accomodation : and 
when they complain of the want of many Con- 
veniences, as they have reason to do, they wonder 
men will come from Home, who will be troubled 
for those Incommodities." ^ 

It is no wonder, therefore, that Spain was 
considered a rather tedious country for strangers, 
and that Howell " met more Passengers 'twixt 
Paris and Orleans, than I found well neer in all 
the Journey through Spain." ^ Curiosity and a 
desire to learn the language might carry a man to 
Madrid for a time, but Englishmen could find 
little to commend there. Holland, on the other 
hand, provoked their admiration more and more. 
Travellers were never done exclaiming at its muni- 
cipal governments, its reformatories and work- 
houses, its industry, frugality, and social economy. 
The neat buildings, elegant streets, and quiet inns, 
were the subject of many encomiums.^ 

1 Tracts : (^ Dialogue concerning Education), ^I'^li P« 340- 

^ The Perambulation of Spain, p. 29. 

^ See Les Delices de la Hollande, Amsterdam, 1700, pp. 19, 25; 
Sir William Brereton, Bart., Travels in Holland, the United Provinces, 
England, Scotland, and Ireland, 163 4- 163 5, ed. Hawkins, for the 
Chatham Society, 1844; William Carr, Gentleman, The Travellers 
Guide and Historian^ s Faithful Companion, London, 1690. 

136 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

Descartes, who chose Amsterdam as the place 
in which to think out his philosophy, praised it 
as the ideal retreat for students, contending that 
it was far hetter for them than Italy, with its 
plagues, heat, unwholesome evenings, murder and 
robbery.^ Locke, when he went into voluntary 
exile in 1684, enjoyed himself with the doctors 
and men of letters in Amsterdam, attending by 
special invitation of the principal physician of the 
city the dissection of a lioness, or discussing knotty 
problems of theology with the wealthy Quaker 
merchants.^ Courtiers were charmed with the 
sea-shore at Scheveningen, where on the hard sand, 
admirably contrived by nature for the divertise- 
ment of persons of quality, the foreign ambassadors 
and their ladies, and the society of the Hague, 
drove in their coaches and six horses.^ However, 
Sir William Temple, after some years spent as 
Ambassador to the Netherlands, decided that 
Holland was a place where a man would choose 
rather to travel than to live, because it was a 
country where there was more sense than wit, 
more wealth than pleasure, and where one 

1 William Seward, Anecdotes of Some Distinguished Persons^ 
London, 1796, vol. ii. p. 168. 

2 Lord King, The Life and Letters of John Locke, ivith Extracts 
Jrom his Journals and Common-place Books, London, 1858, vol. ii. 

pp. 5, 50, 71. 

^The Harleian Miscellany, vol. ii. p. 592. 

^2>1 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

would find more persons to esteem than to 
love.^ 

Holland was of peculiar delight to the traveller 
of the seventeenth century because it contained so 
many curiosities and rareties. To ferret out objects 
of vertu the Jacobean gentleman would take any 
journey. People with cabinets of butterflies, 
miniatures, shells, ivory, or Indian beads, were 
pestered by tourists asking to see their treasures.^ 
No garden was so entrancing to them as one that 
had " a rupellary nidary " ^ or an aviary with 
eagles, cranes, storks, bustards, ducks with four 
wings, or with rabbits of an almost perfect yellow 
colour.^ Holland, therefore, where ships brought 
precious curiosities from all over the world, was 
a heaven for the virtuoso. Evelyn in Rotterdam 
hovered between his delight in the brass statue of 
Erasmus and a pelican, which he carefully de- 
scribes. The great charm of Dutch inns for Sam 
Paterson was their hoards of China and Japan 
ware and the probability you had of meeting a 
purring marmot, a squeaking guinea-pig, or a 

1 Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands, Lon- 
don, 1693, p. 188. 

2 Coriat Junior, Another Traveller, London, 1767, p. 1 52. 

2 John Evelyn, Diary and Correspondence, ed. Bray, London, 
1906, p. 38. 

^ Ibid., p. 29. Also John Raymond, II Mercurio Italico, London, 
1648, p. 95. 

138 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

tame rabbit with a collar of bells, hopping through 
the house. ^ 

But we have dwelt too long, perhaps, on those 
who voyaged to see knick-knacks, and to gain 
accomplishments at French academies. Though 
the academies were characteristic of the seventeenth 
century, there were other centres of education 
sought by Englishmen abroad. The study of 
medicine, particularly, took many students to 
Padua or Paris, for the Continent was far ahead 
of England in scientific work.^ Sir Thomas 
Browne's son studied anatomy at Padua with Sir 
John Finch, who had settled there and was after- 
wards chosen syndic of the university.^ At Paris 
Martin Lister, though in the train of the English 
Ambassador, principally enjoyed " Mr Bennis in 
the dissecting-room working by himself upon a 
dead body," and " took more pleasure to see 
Monsieur Breman in his white waistcoat digging 
in the royal physic-garden and sowing his 
couches, than Mounsieur de Saintot making 
roomfor an ambassador " : and found himself 
better disposed and more apt to learn the names 

1 Coriat Junior, op. cit., p. 152. 

2 R. Poole, Doctor of Physick, y/ Journey from London to France 
and Holland ; or^ the Travellers Useful Vade Mecum, London, 
1746. 

'^ Sir Thomas Browne, Works, ed. Wilkin, vol. i. p. 91. 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

and physiognomy of a hundred plants, than of 
five or six princes.^ 

It was medicine that chiefly interested Nicholas 
Ferrar, than whom no traveller for study's sake was 
ever more devoted to the task of self-improvement. 
At about the same time that the second Earl of 
Chesterfield was fighting duels at the academy of 
Monsieur de Veau, Nicholas Ferrar, a grave boy, 
came from Cambridge to Leipsic and " set himself 
laboriously to study the originals of the city, the 
nature of the government, the humors and inclina- 
tions of the people." Finding the university too 
distracting, he retired to a neighbouring village to 
read the choicest writers on German afi^airs. He 
served an apprenticeship of a fortnight at every 
German trade. He could maintain a dialogue 
with an architect in his own phrases ; he could 
talk with mariners in their sea terms. Removing 
to Padua, he attained in a very short time a 
marvellous proficiency in physic, while his con- 
versation and his charm ennobled the evil students 
of Padua.^ 

1 Martin Lister's Travels in France, in John Pinkerton's Collection 
of Voyages and Travels, 1809, vol. iv. pp. 2, 21. 

2 Nicholas Ferrar, Tivo Lives, by his brother John and by Doctor 
Jebb, ed. J. E. B. Mayor, London, 1855. 



140 



Chapter VI 

THE GRAND TOUR 

AFTER the Restoration the idea of 
polishing one's parts by foreign travel 
received fresh impetus. The friends 
of Charles the Second, having spent so much of 
their time abroad, naturally brought back to 
England a renewed infusion of continental ideals. 
France was more than ever the arbiter for the 
" gentry and civiller sort of mankind." Travellers 
such as Evelyn, who deplored the English gentry's 
" solitary and unactive lives in the country," the 
*' haughty and boorish Englishman," and the 
" constrained address of our sullen Nation," ^ made 
an impression. It was generally acknowledged 
that comity and affability had to be fetched from 
beyond the Seas, for the " meer Englishman " was 
defective in those qualities. He was " rough in 
address, not easily acquainted, and blunt even 
when he obliged." ^ 

Even wise and honest Englishmen began to be 
ashamed of their manners and felt they must try 
to be not quite so English. " Put on a decent 

'^ State of France, 1652, pp. 78, 105. ^1 Character of England, 
1659, pp. 45, 49. 

" Jdvice to a Toung Gentleman Leaving the University, by R.(ichard) 
L. (assels), 1670. 

141 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

boldness," writes Sir Thomas Browne constantly 
to his son in France. " Shun pudor rusticus." 
" Practise an handsome garb and civil boldness 

which he that learneth not in France, travaileth in 

• j> 1 
vam. 

But there was this difference in travel to 

complete the gentleman during the reign of 

Charles the Second : that Italy and Germany were 

again safe and thrown open to travellers, so that 

Holland, Germany, Italy, and France made a 

magnificent round of sights ; namely, the Grand 

Tour. It was still usual to spend some time in 

Paris learning exercises and accomplishments at an 

academy, but a large proportion of effort went to 

driving by post-chaise through the principal towns 

of Europe. Since it was a great deal easier to go 

sight-seeing than to study governments, write 

" relations," or even to manage " The Great 

Horse," the Grand Tour, as a form of education, 

gained upon society, especially at the end of the 

century, when even the academies were too much 

of an exertion for the beaux to attend. To dress 

well and to be witty superseded martial ambitions. 

Gentlemen could no longer endure the violence of 

the Great Horse, but were carried about in sedan 

chairs. To drive through Europe in a coach 

suited them very well. It was a form of travel 

1 Sir Thomas Browne, Works^ ed. by Wilkin, vol. i. pp. ^-i/^., passim. 
142 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

which Hkewise suited country squires' sons ; for with 
the spread of the fashion from Court to country 
not only great noblemen and " utter gallants " but 
plain country gentlemen aspired to send their sons 
on a quest for the " bel air." Their idea of how 
this was to be done being rather vague, the services 
of a governor were hired, who found that the 
easiest way of dealing with Tony Lumpkin was 
to convey him over an impressive number of miles 
and keep him interested with staring at buildings. 
The whole aim of travel was sadly degenerated 
from Elizabethan times. Cynical parents like 
Francis Osborn had not the slightest faith in its 
good effects, but recommended it solely because it 
was the fashion. " Some to starch a more serious 
face upon wanton, impertinent, and dear bought 
Vanity, cry up ' Travel ' as * the best Accomplisher 
of Youth and Gentry,' tho' detected by Experience 
in the generality, for ' the greatest Debaucher ' 
. . . yet since it advanceth Opinion in the World, 
without which Desert is useful to none but itself 
(Scholars and Travellers being cried up for the 
highest Graduates in the most universal Judg- 
ments) I am not much unwilling to give way to 
Peregrine motion for a time." ^ 

In short, the object of the Grand Tour was to 
see and be seen. The very term seems to be an 

1 yldv'ue to a Son, ed. 1896, p. 63. 

H3 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

extension of usage from the word employed to 
describe driving in one's coach about the principal 
streets of a town. The Duchess of Newcastle, in 
1656, wrote from Antwerp: "I go sometimes 
abroad, seldom to visit, but only in my coach 
about the town, or about some of the streets, 
which we call here a tour, where all the chief of 
the town go to see and be seen, likewise all 
strangers of what quality soever." ^ Evelyn, in 
1652, contrasted "making the Tour" with the 
proper sort of industrious travel ; " But he that 
(instead of making the Tour, as they call it) or, as 
a late Embassador of ours facetiously, but sharply 
reproached, (like a Goose swimms down the River) 
having mastered the Tongue, frequented the 
Court, looked into their customes, been present at 
their pleadings, observed their Military Discipline, 
contracted acquaintance with their Learned men, 
studied their Arts, and is familiar with their dis- 
positions, makes this accompt of his time." ^ 
And in another place he says : " It is written of 
Ulysses, that hee saw many Cities indeed, but 
withall his Remarks of mens Manners and 
Customs, was ever preferred to his counting 
Steeples, and making Tours: It is this Ethicall 

1 Life of William Cavendish^ Duke of Neivcastle, ed. Firth, 1886, 
p. 309. 

2 Prefatory Letter, The State of France^ 1652, fol. B. 

144 




TENNIS AS i'l.AVED IN I'AKIS IN l6i2 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

and Morall part of Travel, which embelHsheth a 
Gentleman."^ In 1670, Richard Lassels uses the 
term " Grand Tour " for the first time in an 
EngHsh book for travellers : " The Grand Tour 
of France and the Giro of Italy." '^ Of course 
this is only specialized usage of the idea " round " 
w^hich had long been current, and which still 
survives in our phrase, " make the round trip." 
" The Spanish ambassadors," writes Dudley Carle- 
ton in 1610, "are at the next Spring to make a 
perfect round." ^ 

In the age of the Grand Tour the governor 
becomes an important figure. There had always 
been governors, to be sure, from the very begin- 
nings of travel to become a complete person. 
Their arguments with fathers as to the expenses of 
the tour, and their laments at the disagreeable 
conduct of their charges echo from generation to 
generation. Now it is Mr Windebanke complain- 
ing to Cecil that his son " has utterly no mind nor 
disposition in him to apply any learning, accord- 
ing to the end you sent him for hither," being 
carried away by an " inordinate affection towards 
a young gentlewoman abiding near Paris." * Now 

1 Ibid., fol. B 3. 

2 The Voyage of Italy, Paris, 1670. ^ Prejace to the Reader con- 
cerning Travelling. 

^ lViri<wood Memorials, vol. iii. 312. 

* Calendar of State Papers, Foreign, I 561-2, pp. 632, 635. 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

it is Mr Smythe desiring to be called home unless 
the allowance for himself and Francis Davison 
can be increased. " For Mr Francis is now a 
man, and your son, and not so easily ruled touch- 
ing expenses, about which we have had more 
brabblements than I will speak of." ^ Bacon's 
essay " Of Travel " in 1625 is the first to advise 
the use of a governor ; ^ but governors rose to 
their full authority only in the middle of the 
century, when it was the custom to send boys 
abroad very young, at fourteen or fifteen, because 
at that age they were more malleable for instruc- 
tion in foreign languages. At that age they could 
not generally be trusted by themselves, especially 
after the protests of a century against the moral 
and religious dangers of foreign travel. How 
fearful parents were of the hazards of travel, and 
what a responsibility it was for a governor to 
undertake one of these precious charges, may be 
gathered from this letter by Lady Lowther to 
Joseph Williamson, he who afterwards rose to be 

1 Davison's Poetical Rhapsody, ed. Nicolas, vol. i. p, xi, 

2 " That young men travel under some tutor, or grave servant, I 
allow well : so that he be such a one that hath some entrance into the 
language, and hath been in the country before ; whereby he may be 
able to tell them what things are worthy to be seen in the country 
where they go: what acquaintances they are to seek ; what exercises or 
discipline the place yieldeth. For else young men shall go hooded, 
and look abroad little " {^Essays : 0/ Travel). 

146 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

Secretary of State : " I doubt not but you have 
received my son," writes the mother, " with our 
letters entreating your care for improving all good 
in him and restraining all irregularities, as he is 
the hope and only stem of his father. I implore 
the Almighty, and labour for all means conducible 
thereto ; I conceive your discreet government and 
admonition may much promote it. Tell me 
whether you find him tractable or disorderly : his 
disposition is good, and his natural parts reason- 
able, but his acquirements meaner than I desire : 
however he is young enough yet to learn, and by 
study may recover, if not recall, his lost time. 

" In the first place, endeavour to settle him in 
his religion, as the basis of all our other hopes, and 
the more to be considered in regard, of the loose- 
ness of the place where you are. I doubt not but 
you have well considered of the resolve to travel 
to Italy, yet I have this to say for my fond fears 
(besides the imbecility of my sex) my affections 
are all contracted into one head : also I know the 
hotness of his temper, apt to feverishness. Yet I 
submit him to your total management, only pray- 
ing the God of Heaven to direct you for the best, 
and to make him tractable to you, and laborious 
for his own advancement." ^ 

1 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1651-2, No, 51. It will be 
seen from the above letter that fear of a change in their son's religion 

147 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

A governor became increasingly necessary as 
the arbiter of what was modish for famiUes whose 
connection with the fashionable world was slight. 
He assumed airs of authority, and took to writing 
books on how the Grand Tour should be made. 
Such is The Voyage of Italy^ with Instructions 
concerning Travel^ by Richard Lassels^ Gent.y 
who " travelled through Italy Five times, as Tutor 
to several of the English Nobility and Gentry." ^ 
Lassels, in reciting the benefits of travel, plays 
upon that growing sensitiveness of the country 
gentleman about his innocent peculiarities : " The 
Country Lord that never saw anybody but his 
Father's Tenants and M. Parson, and never read 
anything but John Stow, and Speed ; thinks the 
Land's-end to be the World's-end ; and that all 
solid greatness, next unto a great Pasty, consists in 
a great Fire, and a great estate;" or, "My Country 
gentleman that never travelled, can scarce go to 
London without making his Will, at least without 
wetting his hand-kerchief." '^ 

was still a very real one in the minds of parents. See also A Letter of 
Advice to a Toung Gentleman of an Honorable Family, Now in his Travels 
beyond the Seas. By a True Son of the Church of England, London, 
1 688. The writer hopes that above all things the young man may return 
" A well-bred Gentleman, a good Scholar, and a sound Christian." 

1 " Newly printed at Paris, and are to be sold in London, by John 
Starkey, 1670." Lassels, a Roman Catholic, passed most of his life 
abroad. He left Oxford for the College of Douay." See D.N.B. 

2 The Voyage of Italy, Preface to the Reader. 

148 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

The Grand Tour, of course, is the remedy for 
these weaknesses — especially under the direction of 
a wise governor. More care should go to choosing 
that governor than to any other retainer. For 
lacqueys and footmen " are like his Galoshooes, 
which he leaves at the doors of those he visits," 
but his governor is like his shirt, always next him, 
and should therefore be of the best material. The 
revelation of bad governors in Lassels' instructions 
are enough to make one recoil from the Grand 
Tour altogether. These " needy bold men " led 
pupils to Geneva, where the pupils lost all their 
true English allegiance and respect for monarchy ; 
they kept them in dull provincial cities where the 
governor's wife or mistress happened to live. 
" Others have been observed to sell their pupils to 
Masters of exercises, and to have made them believe 
that the worst Academies were the best, because 
they were the best to the cunning Governour, 
who had ten pound a man for every one he could 
draw thither : Others I have known who would 
have married their Pupils in France without their 
Parents' knowledge " ; ^ . . . and so forth, with 
other more lurid examples. 

The difficulties of procuring the right sort of 
governor were hardly exaggerated by Lassels. 
The Duke of Ormond's grandson had just such a 

1 op. cit., Preface to the Reader. 

149 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

dishonest tutor as described — one who instead of 
showing the Earl of Ossory the world, carried 
him among his own relations, and "buried" 
him at Orange.^ It seems odd, at first sight, that 
the Earl of Salisbury's son should be entrusted to 
Sir John Finet, who endeared himself to James 
the First by his remarkable skill in composing 
" bawdy songs." ^ It astonishes us to read that 
Lord Clifford's governor, Mr Beecher, lost his 
temper at play, and called Sir Walter Chute into 
the field/ or that Sir Walter Raleigh's son was 
able to exhibit his governor, Ben Jonson, dead- 
drunk upon a car, " which he made to be drawn 
by pioneers through the streets, at every corner 
showing his governor stretched out, and telling 
them that was a more lively image of a crucifix 
than any they had." * But it took a manly man 
to be a governor at all. It was not safe to select 
a merely intelligent and virtuous tutor ; witness 

1 Thomas Carte, Life of James, Duke of Omond, vol. iv. p, 632. 
" He passed several months in a very cheap country, and yet the bills 
of expenses sent over by the governor were higher than those which 
used to be drawn by Colonel Fairfax on account of the Earl of Derby, 
when he was travelling from place to place, and appeared in all with so 
much dignity." 

2 Anthony Weldon, Court and Character of King James, London, 
1650, p. 92. 

^ Winivood Memorials, vol. iii. p. 226. 

* Ben Jonson, Conversations luith Drummond, ed. Sidney, 1906, 

PP- 34-S- 
150 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

the case of the Earl of Derby sent abroad in i ^']2i-i 
with Mr James Forbes, " a gentleman of parts, 
virtue and prudence, but of too mild a nature to 
manage his pupil." The adventures of these two, 
as narrated by Carte in his life of Ormond, are 
doubtless typical. 

" They had not been three months at Paris, 
before a misunderstanding happened between them 
that could not be made up, so that both wrote 
over to the duke (of Ormond) complaining of 
one another. His grace immediately dispatched 
over Mr Muleys to inquire into the ground of 
the quarrel, in order to reconcile them. . . . The 
earl had forgot the advice which the duke had 
given him, to make himself acquainted with the 
people of quality in France, and to keep as little 
correspondence with his own countrymen, whilst 
he was abroad, as was consistent with good 
manners ; and had formed an intimate acquaint- 
ance with a lewd, debauched young fellow whom 
he found at Paris, and who was the son of 
Dr Merrit, a physician. The governor had 
cautioned his young nobleman against creating 
a friendship with so worthless a person, who 
would draw him into all manner of vice and 
expense, and lead him into numberless incon- 
veniences. Merrit, being told of this, took Mr 
Forbes one day at an advantage in an house, and 

151 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

wounded him dangerously. The earl, instead of 
manifesting his resentment as he ought in such a 
case, seemed rather pleased with the affair, and 
still kept on his intimacy with Merrit. The 
duke finding that Merrit had as ill a character 
from all that knew him in London, as Mr 
Forbes had given him, easily suspected the earl 
was in the wrong, and charged Muleys to re- 
present to him the ill fame of the man, and 
how unworthy he was of his lordship's acquaint- 
ance and conversation. . . . 

" When Muleys came to Paris, he found the 
matters very bad on Lord Derby's side, who had 
not only countenanced Merrit's assault, but, at the 
instigation of some young French rakes, had con- 
sented to his governor's being tossed in a blanket. 
The earl was wild, full of spirits, and impatient 
of restraint : Forbes was a grave, sober, mild man, 
and his sage remonstrances had no manner of 
effect on his pupil. The duke, seeing what the 
young gentleman would be at, resolved to send 
over one that should govern him. For this 
purpose he pitched upon Colonel Thomas Fairfax, 
a younger son of the first lord Fairfax, a gallant 
and brave man (as all the Fairfaxes were), and 
roughly honest. Lord Derby was restless at 
first : but the colonel told him sharply, that he 
was sent to govern him, and would govern him : 
152 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

that his lordship must submit, and should do it ; 
so that the best method he had to take, was to do 
it with decorum and good humour. He soon 
discharged the vicious and scandalous part of the 
earl's acquaintance, and signified to the rest, that 
he had the charge of the young nobleman, who 
was under his government : and therefore if any 
of them should ever have a quarrel with his pupil, 
who was young and inexperienced, he himself 
was their man, and would give them satisfaction. 
His courage was too well known to tempt any- 
body make a trial of it ; the nobleness of his 
family, and his own personal merit, procured him 
respect from all the world, as well as from his pupil. 
No quarrel happened ; the earl was reclaimed, 
being always very observant of his governor. 
He left Paris, and passing down the Loire went 
to the south of France, received in all places by 
the governors of towns and provinces with great 
respect and uncommon marks of honour and 
distinction. From thence he went into Italy, 
making a handsome figure in all places, and 
travelling with as much dignity as any nobleman 
whatever at little more than one thousand two 
hundred pounds a year expense ; so easy is it to 
make a figure in those countries with virtue, 
decorum, and good management." ^ 

1 Life of James i Duke of Ormonde vol. iv. pp. 487-90. 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

This concluding remark of Carte's gives us 
the point of view of certain families ; that it was 
more economical to live abroad. It certainly was 
— for courtiers who had to pay eighty pounds for a 
suit of clothes — without trimming ^ — and spent two 
thousand pounds on a supper to the king.^ Francis 
Osborn considered one of the chief benefits of 
travel to be the training in economy which it 
afforded : " Frugality being of none so perfectly 
learned as of the Italian and the Scot ; Natural to 
the first, and as necessary to the latter." ^ Not- 
withstanding, the cost of travel had in the ex- 
travagant days of the Stuarts much increased. 
The Grand Tour cost more than travel in Eliza- 
bethan days, when young men quietly settled 
down for hard study in some German or Italian 
town. Robert Sidney, for instance, had only 
ji^ioo a year when he was living with Sturm. 
" Tearm yt as you wyll, it ys all I owe you," said 
his father. " Harry Whyte . . . shall have his ;^20 
yearly, and you your ;^ioo; and so be as mery 
as you may." '^ Secretary Davison expected his 
son, his tutor, and their servant to live on this 

1 Court and Times of James I., vol. i. p. 285. 

2 Life of James, Duke of Ormond, vol. iv. p. 667. 
2 jidvice to a Son, p. 72. 

* A. Collins, Letters and Memorials of State, vol. i. p. 271. (Sir 
Henry Sidney to his son Robert Sidney, after Earl of Leicester.) 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

amount at Venice. " Mr. Wo." had said this 
would suffice.^ If " Mr Wo." means Mr Wotton, 
as it probably does, since Wotton had just re- 
turned from abroad in 1594, and Francis Davison 
set out in 1595, he was an authority on economical 
travel, for he used to live in Germany at the rate 
of one shilling, four pence halfpenny a day for 
board and lodging.^ But he did not carry with 
him a governor and an English servant. Moryson, 
Howell, and Dallington all say that expenses for 
a servant amounted to ^S*^ yearly. Therefore 
Davison's tutor quite rightly protested that ;^2oo 
would not suffice for three people. Although 
they spent " not near so much as other gentlemen 
of their nation at Venice, and though he went to 
market himself and was as frugal as could be, 
the expenses would mount up to forty shillings a 
week, not counting apparel and books." " I protest 
I never endured so much slavery in my life to 
save money," he laments.^ When learning ac- 
complishments in France took the place of student- 
life in Italy, expenses naturally rose. Moryson, 
who travelled as a humanist, for " knowledge of 
State affaires, Histories,Cosmography, and the like," 
found that fifty or sixty pounds were enough to 

1 Davison's Poetical Rhapsody, ed. Nicolas, vol. i. pp. viii.-xi. 

2 Sir Henry IVotton ; Life and Letters, ed. Pearsall Smith, vol. i. 
p. 233 (note i). 

^ Davison's Poetical Rhapsody, pp. viii., xi. 

^5S 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

" beare the charge of a Traveller's diet, necessary 
apparrell, and two Journies yeerely, in the Spring 
and Autumne, and also to serve him for moderate 
expences of pleasure." ^ But Dallington found 
that an education of the French sort would come 
to just twice as much. " If he Travell without a 
servant fourscore pounds sterling is a competent 
proportion, except he learne to ride : if he main- 
taine both these charges, he can be allowed no 
lesse than one hundred and fiftie poundes : and 
to allowe above two hundred, were superfluous, 
and to his hurte. And thus rateably, according 
to the number he keeoeth. 

" The ordinarie rate of his expence, is this : 
ten gold crownes a moneth his owne dyet, eight 
for his man, (at the most) two crownes a moneth 
his fencing, as much dancing, no lesse his reading, 
and fiftene crownes monethly his ridings : but this 
exercise he shall discontinue all the heate of the 
yeare. The remainder of his 150 pound I 
allow him for apparell, bookes. Travelling 
charges, tennis play, and other extraordinaire 
expences." ^ A few years later Howell fixes 
annual expense at ;^30o — {£s^ extra for every 
servant.) These three hundred pounds are to pay 
for riding, dancing, fencing, tennis, clothes, and 

^ Itinerary, vol. iii. p. 374. 

2 ^ Method for Travel/, fol. G, 

156 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

coach hire — a new item of necessity. An academy 
would seem to have been a cheaper means of 
learning accomplishments. For about ^^ 1 1 o one 
might have lodging and diet for himselfe and a 
man and be taught to ride, fence, ply mathematics, 
and so forth. ^ Lassels very wisely refrains from 
telling those not already persuaded, what the cost 
will be for the magnificent Grand Tour he out- 
lines. We calculate that it would be over ;2^5oo, 
for the Earl of Cork paid ;^iooo a year for his 
two sons, their governor, only two servants and 
only saddle-horses : ^ whereas Lassels hints that 
no one with much pretension to fashion could go 
through Paris without a coach followed by three 
lacqueys and a page.'^ Evelyn, at any rate, 
thought the expenses of a traveller were " vast " : 
" And believe it Sir, if he reap some contentment 
extraordinary, from what he hath observed abroad, 
the pains, soUicitations, watchings, perills, jour- 
neys, ill entertainment, absence from friends, and 
innumerable like inconveniences, joyned to his 
vast expences, do very dearly, and by a strange 
kind of extortion, purchase that smal experience 
and reputation which he can vaunt to have 
acquired from abroad." ^ 

1 Instructions for Forreine Travell^ ?• 5^' 

2 Lismore Papers, 2nd Series, vol. v. p. 24. 

3 The Voyage of Italy ; Preface to the Reader, fol. B 4. 
^ The State of France. 1652. Folio B. 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

Perhaps some details from the education of 
Robert Boyle will serve to illustrate the manner 
of taking the Grand Tour. His father, the 
great Earl of Cork, was a devoted adherent to 
this form of education and launched his numerous 
sons, two by two, upon the Continent. He was, 
as Boyle says, the sort of person " who supplied 
what he wanted in scholarship himself, by being 
both a passionate affecter, and eminent patron of 
it."^ His journal for 1638 records first the 
return of " My sones Lewis and Roger from their 
travailes into foreign kingdomes, . . . fFor which 
their safe retorn, god be ever humbly and heartely 
thancked and praised both by me and them." ^ 
In the same year he recovered the Lord Viscount 
of Kynalmeaky and the Lord of Broghill, with 
Mr Marcombes, their governor, from their foreign 
travels into France and Italy. Then it was the 
turn of Francis and Robert, just removed from 
Eton College. With the governor Marcombes, 
a French servant, and a French boy, they departed 
from London in October 1639, "having his 
Majestie's license under his hand and privy signett 
for to continew abrode 3 yeares : god guide them 
abrod and safe back." ^ 

1 Robert Boyle, Works, 1 744, vol. i. p. 7. 

2 Lismore Papers,, ist Series, vol. v. pp. 78, 80. 
^ Ibid.,, p. 112. 

158 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

Robert, according to his autobiography, was 
well satisfied to go, but Francis, aged fifteen, had 
just been married to one of the Queen's Maids 
of Honour, aged fourteen, and after four days of 
revelry was in no mood to be thrust back into the 
estate of childhood. '^ High words passed between 
him and his father on the occasion of his enforced 
departure for Paris. He was so agitated that he 
mislaid his sword and pistols — at least so we 
hear by the first letter Marcombes writes from 
Paris. " Mr Francis att his departure from 
London was so much troubled because of your 
Lordship's anger against him that he could never 
tell us where he put his sword and ye kaise of 
pistoles that your Lordship gave them, so that 
I have been forced to buy them here a kaise 
of pistolles a peece, because of the danger that is 
now everywhere in France, and because it is so 
much ye mode now for every gentleman of fashion 
to ride with a kase of Pistoles, that they Laugh 
att those that have them not. I bought also a 
Sword for mr francis and when Mr Robert saw 
it he did so earnestly desire me to buy him one, 
because his was out of fashion, that I could not 
refuse him that small request." ^ 

1 It was a common custom at this time to marry one's sons, if a 
favourable match could be made, before they went abroad. 

2 Lismore Papers, 2nd Series, vol. iv. p. 95. 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

Marcombes did not expose the boys long to the 
excitement of Paris, but at once hurried them to 
Geneva, and settled them to work, where Francis 
showed a great deal of resignation and good- 
humour in accepting his fate. He was not so sulky 
as Lord Cranborne, who in a similar situation fell 
ill, could not eat, and had to be taken back to 
England.^ " And as for Mr francis," writes 
Marcombes to Cork, " I protest unto your Lord- 
ship that I did not thinke yt he could frame 
himselfe to every kind of good Learning with so 
great a facilitie and passion as he doth, having 
tasted already a little drope of ye Libertinage of ye 
Court, but I find him soe disciplinable, and soe 
desirous to repare ye time Lost, yt I make no 
question but your Lordship shall receive a great 
ioye." ^ He had not had much of an education 
at Eton, as his governor takes pleasure in pointing 
out : " For Mr Francis I doe assure your Lordship 

1 On Nov. 23rd, 1610, Carl eton, the Ambassador at Venice, wrote 
to Salisbury that his son was ill at Padua. " He finds relish in 
nothing on this side the mountains, nor much in anything on this side 
the sea ; his affections being so strangely set on his return homeward, 
that any opposition is a disease." Cranborne's tutor, Dr Lister, wrote 
to Carleton in December : " Sir, we must for England, there is no 
resisting of it. If we stay the fruit will not be great, the discontent 
infinite. My Lord is going to dinner, this being the first meal he 
eateth." (State Papers, 161 o. Cited in Life and Letters of Sir 
Henry Wotton, ed. Pearsall-Smith, vol. i. p. 50 1.) 

2 Lismore Papers, 2nd Series, vol. iv. p. 98. 

160 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

he had need to aplay himselfe to other things till 
now, for except reeding and writting Inglish he 
was grounded in nothing of ye wordle (world) ; 
and beleeve me, for before God I spake true, 
when I say that never any gentleman hath 
donne lesse profit of his time then he had done 
when he went out of England : and besides 
yt if he had been Longer at Eatton he had 
Learned there to drinke with other deboice 
scholers, as I have beene in formed by Mr 
Robert." ' 

Won over by the study of " Fortifications," a 
branch of mathematics very pleasing to the seven- 
teenth century boy, the future Viscount Shannon 
applied himself to work with energy ; "^ and for a 
time peace reigned over the process of education. 
"Every morning," writes their tutor, "I teach 
them ye Rhetoricke in Latin, and I expound unto 
them Justin from Latin into french, and presently 
after dinner I doe reade unto them two chapters 
of ye old Testament with a brief exposition of 
those points that I think that they doe not under- 
stand ; and before supper I teach them ye history 
of ye Romans in french out of florus and of Titus 
Livius, and two sections of ye Cateshisme of 
Caluin with ye most orthodox exposition of the 

^ Lismore Papers, 2nd Series, vol, iv. p. 234. 
^ Ibid., p. 171. 

L 161 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

points that they doe not understand ; and after 
supper I doe reade unto them two chapters of ye 
new Testament, and both morning and evening we 
say our prayers together, and twice a weeke we goe 
to Church." 1 

The boys spoke French always, and had some 
dancing lessons, but no riding lessons, for " their 
lyms are not knitt and strong enough, nor their 
bodys hable to endure rough exercises ; and besides, 
although wee have here as good and skillfull 
teachers as in many other places, yet when they 
shall come to paris or some other place, their 
teachers will make them beleeve that they have 
Lost their time and shall make them beginn 
againe : for it is their custome so to doe to all." ^ 
At tennis, however, Francis enjoyed himself, and 
grew apace. " I may assure your Lordship that 
both his Leggs and armes are by a third part 
bigger now then they were in England." Robert, 
even at fourteen a studious person, " doth not 
Love tennisse play so much, but delights himselfe 
more to be in private with some booke of history 
or other, but I perswade him often both to play 
att tennisse and goe about. I never saw him 
handsomer, for although he growes much, yet he 
is very fatt and his cheeks are as red as vermilian. 

1 Lismore Papers, 2nd Series, vol. iv. p. i oo. 
^ Ibid., p. 103. 

162 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

This Leter end of ye winter is mighty cold and a 
great quantity of snow is fallen upon ye ground, 
but that brings them to such a stomacke that your 
Lordship should take a great pleasure to see them 
feed. I do not give them daintys, but I assure 
your Lordship that they have all way es good bred 
and Good wine, good beef and mouton, thrice a 
week good capons and good fish, constantly two 
dishes of fruit and a Good piece of cheese; all 
kind of cleane linnen twice and thrice a week and 
a constant fire in their chamber wherein they have 

a good bed for them, and another for their 

-^^^ " 1 
men. 

Indeed, Marcombes was a very good governor, 

as Robert several times assured the Earl of Cork, 

and allowed them to lack for nothing. In the 

spring he bought them saddle-horses so that after 

their studies they might take the air and see their 

friends. Since a governor had charge of all the 

funds, it was a great test of his honesty whether 

he resisted the temptation to economize on the 

clothes and spending-money of his pupils, and to 

pocket the part of their allowance so saved. 

This is why Marcombes often lets fall into his 

letters to the Earl of Cork items such as these : 

" I have made a compleat black satin sute for 

Mr Robert : ye cloake Lined with plush, and I 

"^ Lismore Papers, 2nd Series, vol. iv. p. lOO. 

163 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

allow them every moneth a peese ye value of 
very neare two pounds sterlings for their passe 
time." 1 

T'he only disturbing elements in the satisfactory 
state of Marcombes and his pupils were the Killi- 
grews. Thomas Killigrew, he who afterwards 
became one of the dramatists of the Restoration, 
had then only just outgrown the estate of page to 
Charles I., and in strolling about the Continent 
he paid the Boyles a visit."^ As the brother of 
the wife whom Mr Francis had left at home, and 
on his own account as a fascinating courtier, he 
cast a powerful but baleful influence upon the 
household in Geneva. Marcombes was at first 
very guarded in his remarks, writing only that 
" Mr Kyligry is here since Saturday Last . . . but I 
think he will not Stay long : which perhaps will 
be ye better for yr sons : for although his con- 
versation is very sweet and delectable yet they 
have no need of interruption, specially Mr francis, 
which was* much abused in his Learning by his 
former teachers : and although he hath a great 
desire to redime ye time, yet he cannot follow 
his younger brother, and therefore he must have 
time, and avoid ye company of those yt care 

1 Lismore Papers, 2nd Series, vol. iv. p. 99. 

2 In March 1640. This fact, and his appearance in the Lismore 
Papers, are not mentioned in the Dictionary of National Biography. 

164 




SIR THOMAS KII.LIGREW 

From a conteiiiporayv caricature of the Restoration dramatist, zv/io formed some of his 

characteristics in France in /640 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

not for their bookes." ^ But when it appeared 
that Killigrew had told the Earl of Cork that 
Marcombes kept the brothers shabbily dressed, 
the governor unfolded his opinion of the rising 
dramatist as " one that speakes ill of his own 
mother and of all his friends and that plays ye 
foole allwayes through ye streets like a Schoole 
Boy, having Allwayes his mouth full of whoores 
and such discourses, and braging often of his 
getting mony from this or ye other merchant 
without any good intention to pay." ^ His com- 
pany fomented in Mr Francis a boastful spirit, 
" never speaking of any thing but what he 
should doe when he should once more com- 
mand his state, how many dogs he shoulde 
keepe ; how many horses ; how many fine 
bands, sutes and rubans, and how freely he 
would play and keepe Company with good 
fellowes, etc."^ 

Thomas Killigrew's sister, the wife of Mr 
Francis, was also a very disturbing person. She 
would correspond with her husband and urge 
him to run away from his tutor, and suggested 
coming to the Continent herself and meeting 
him.'* These plots she made with the assistance 
of her brother, whom she much resembled in 

^ Lismore Papers, 2nd Series, vol. iv. p. 113. ~ Ibid., p. 235. 

^ Ibid., p. 234. ^ Ibid., pp. 232-3. 

165 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

disposition.^ There is no knowing what havoc 
she would have made with the carefully planned 
education of the Boyles, for Francis at the end 
of two years became dangerously restive, had not 
their tour been decisively ended by the first 
rumblings of the Civil War at home. 

After a winter in Italy, they were about to 
start for Paris to perfect themselves in dancing 
and to begin riding the great horse, when they 
received news that the Earl of Cork was ruined 
by the rebellion in Ireland. He could send them 
no more money, he told them, than the two 
hundred and fifty pounds he had just dispatched. 
By economizing, and dismissing their servants, 
they might reach Holland, and enlist under the 
Prince of Orange. They must now work out 
their fortune for themselves.^ 

The two hundred and fifty pounds never came. 
They were embezzled by the agent; and the 
Boyles were left penniless in a strange country. 
Marcombes did not desert them, however. Robert, 
who was too frail for soldiering, he kept with 
him in Geneva for two years. Francis, free at 
last, took horse, was off to Ireland, and joined 
in the fighting beside his brothers Dungarvan, 

1 She became one of the mistresses of Charles II. With her 
daughter, Charlotte Boyle, otherwise Fitzroy, she is buried in 
Westminster Abbey. {^Cockayne s Peerage, under Viscount Shannon.) 

^ Lismore Papers, 2nd Series, vol. v. pp. 19-24. 
166 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

Kynalmeaky, and Broghill, who rallied around 
their father.^ 

There are several other seventeenth-century 
books on the theory of travel besides Lassels', 
which would repay reading. But we have come 
to the period when essays of this sort contain so 
many repetitions of one another, that detailed 
comment would be tedious. Edward Leigh's 
Three Diatribes'^ appeared in 1671, a year after 
Lassels' book, and in 1678 Gailhard, another 
professional governor, in his " Directions for the 
Education of youth as to their Breeding at Home 
and Travelling Abroad," '^ imitated Lassels' atten- 
tion to the particular needs of the country gentle- 
man. " The honest country gentleman " is a 
synonym for one apt to be fooled, one who has 
neither wit nor experience. He, above all others, 
needs to go abroad to study the tempers of men 
and learn their several fashions. " As to Country 
breeding, which is opposed to the Courts, to the 
Cities, or to Travelling : when it is merely such, 
it is a clownish one. Before a Gentleman comes 
to a settlement, Hawking, Coursing and Hunting, 
are the dainties of it ; then taking Tobacco, 
and going to the Alehouse and Tavern, where 
matches are made for Races, Cock-fighting, and 

1 lAsmore Papers, 2nd Series, vol. v. pp. 72, 97, 121. 

2 Three Diatribes or Discourses, London, 1671. 
^ The Compleat Gentleman, London, 1678. 

167 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

the like." As opposed to this Hfe, Gailhard holds 
up the pattern of Sir Thomas Grosvenor, who did 
"strive after being bettered with an Outlandish 
Breeding" by means of close application to the 
French and Italian languages, to fencing, dancing, 
riding The Great Horse, drawing landscapes, and 
learning the guitar. " His Moneys he did not 
trifle away, but bestowed them upon good Books, 
Medals and other useful Rareties worth the 
Curiosity of a Compleat Gentleman." ^ 

On comparing these instructions with those of 
the sixteenth century, one is struck with the 
emphasis they lay upon drawing and " limning." 
This is what we would expect in the seventeenth 
century, when an interest in pictures, statues, and 
architecture was a distinguishing feature of a 
gentleman. The Marquis de Seignelay, sent on 
a tour in 1617 by his father Colbert, was accom- 
panied by a painter and an architect charged to 
make him understand the beauties of Italian art.^ 
Antoine Delahaute, making the Grand Tour with 
an Abbe for a governor, carried with him an 
artist as well, so that when he came upon a fine 
site, he ordered the chaise to be stopped, and the 
view to be drawn by the obedient draughtsman.^ 

^ The Compleat Gentleman^ p. 3. 

2 Albert Babeau, Les Voyagexirs en France, Paris, 1885, p. 175. 
^ M. Adrien Delahaute, Une Famille de Finance au XVIII. Sieciey 
vol. i. p. 434. 

168 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

Not only did gentlemen study to appreciate 
pictures, but they strove themselves to draw and 
paint. In the travels of George Sandys^ (edition 
1615), may be seen a woodcut of travellers, in 
the costume of Henry of Navarre, sketching at 
the side of Lake Avernus. To take out one's 
memorandum - book and make a sketch of a 
charming prospect, was the usual thing before 
the camera was invented. " Before 1 went to 
bed I took a landscape of this pleasant terrace," 
says Evelyn in Roane.^ At Tournon, where he 
saw a very strong castle under a high precipice, 
" The prospect was so tempting that I could not 
forbear designing it with my crayon." ^ Con- 
sequently, we find instructions for travellers 
reflecting the tastes of the time : Gerbier's Stib- 
sidium P eregrinantibus ^ for instance, insisting on 
a knowledge of " Perspective, Sculpture, Archi- 
tecture and Pictures," as among the requisites of a 
polite education, lays great stress on the identifi- 
cation and survey of works of art as one of the 
main duties of a traveller.* 

Significant as are the instructions of Gerbier, 

1 George Sandys, A Relation of a Journey begun in An. Dom. 1610, 
London, 1615. 

2 John Evelyn, Diary and Correspondence, ed. Bray, London, 1906, 
vol. i. p. 77. 

3 Ibid., p. 78. 

* Balthazar Gerbier, Subsidium Peregrinantibus, Oxford, 1665. 

169 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

Lassels, and others of this period, there are some 
directions for an education abroad which are more 
interesting than these products of professional 
tutors — instructions written by one who was 
himself the perfect gentleman of his day. The 
Earl of Chesterfield's letters to his son define the 
purpose of a foreign education with a freedom 
which is lacking in the book of a governor who 
writes for the public eye. Though the contents 
of the letters are familiar to everyone, their con- 
nection with travel for " cultum animi " has 
hitherto, I think, been overlooked. 

It will be remembered that the earl sent his son 
abroad at the age of fourteen to study for five 
years on the Continent, and to acquire a better 
preparation for life than Oxford or Cambridge 
could offer. Of these universities Chesterfield 
had a low opinion. He could not sufficiently 
scorn an education which did not prevent a man 
from being flurried at his Presentation to the 
King. He remembered that he himself, when 
he was first introduced into good company, with 
all the awkwardness and rust of Cambridge about 
him, was frightened out of his wits. At Cam- 
bridge he " had acquired among the pedants of an 
illiberal seminary a turn for satire and contempt, 
and a strong tendency to argumentation and con- 
tradiction," which was a hindrance to his progress 
170 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

in the polite world. Only after a continental 
education did he see the follies of Englishmen 
who knew nothing of modern Europe, who were 
always talking of the Ancients as something more 
than men, and of the iVl oderns as something less. 
" They are never without a classic or two in their 
pockets; they stick to the old good sense; they read 
none of modern trash ; and will show you plainly 
that no improvement has been made, in any one 
art or science, these last seventeen hundred years." ^ 

His son, therefore, was to waste no time in the 
society of pedants, but accompanied by a travelling 
tutor, was to begin studying life first-hand at the 
Courts. His book-learning was to go side by side 
with the study of manners : 

" Courts and Camps are the only places to learn 
the world in. There alone all kinds of characters 
resort, and human nature is seen in all the various 
shapes and modes . . . whereas, in all other places, 
one local mode generally prevails." ^ 

Moreover, the earl did not think that a com- 
pany wholly composed of men of learning could 
be called good company. " They cannot have 
the easy manners and tournure of the world, 
as they do not live in it." And an engaging 
address, " an insinuating behaviour," was to be 



^ Letter to his Son, Feb. 2 2, 174b. 
^ 3ic/., Oct. 2, O.S., 1747. 



171 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

sought for early in life, and, at the same time, 
with the solid parts of learning. " The Scholar, 
without good breeding, is a Pedant : the Philo- 
sopher, a Cynic : the Soldier, a Brute : and every 
man disagreeable." ^ 

The five years of young Stanhope's travel 
were carefully distributed as follows : a year in 
Lausanne,^ for the rudiments of languages ; a 
year in Leipsic, for a thorough grounding in 
history and jurisprudence ; a year spent in 
visits to such cities as Berlin, Dresden, and 
Vienna, for a view of the different Courts ; one 
in Italy, to get rid of the manners of Germany ; 
and one in Paris, to give him the final polish, 
the supreme touch, of gentlemanly complaisance, 
politeness, and ease. 

We may pass over the years in Germany, as 
the earl did, without much comment. Young 
Stanhope was quite satisfactory in the more solid 
parts of learning, and it was not until he reached 
Italy, there to begin his courtly training, that 
Chesterfield's interest was fully aroused. 

" The manners of Leipsig must be shook off," 

1 Letter to his Son, Oct. 9, O.S., 1747. 

^ Lausanne was where Edward Gibbon received the education he con- 
sidered farsuperior to whatcould be had from Oxford. When he returned 
to England, after four years, he missed the "elegant and rational society" 
of Lausanne, and could not love London — "the noisy and expensive 
scene of crowds without company, and dissipation without pleasure." 

172 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

he says emphatically. " No scramblings at your 
meals as at a German ordinary : no awkward 
overturns of glasses, plates, and salt-eel lers." ^ 

He is to mind the decent mirth of the courtiers 
— their discreet frankness, their natural, careless, 
but genteel air ; in short, to acquire the Graces. 
Chesterfield sent letters of introduction to the 
best company in Venice, forwarded his own 
diamond shoe buckles for his son, and began to 
pour forth advice on the possible social problems 
confronting a young Englishman in Rome. With 
a contemptuous tolerance for Papists, Protestants, 
and all religious quarrels as obstructions to the 
art of pleasing, he bade Stanhope be civil to the 
Pope, and to kneel down while the Host was 
being carried through the streets. His tutor, 
though, had better not. With wonderful artistic 
insight, the earl perceives that the fitting attitude 
for Mr Harte is simple, ungracious honesty.^ 

On the subject of the Pretender, then resident 
in Rome, his advice is ; never meet a Stuart at 
all if you can help it; but if you must, feign 
ignorance of him and his grievances. If he begins 
to talk politics, disavow any knowledge of events 
in England, and escape as soon as you can.'^ 

Long before his son's year in Italy was com- 

1 Letter to his Son, April i 2, 0,S., 1749. 

" Ibid., Sept, 22, O.S., 1749. ^ Hid., Sept, 5, O.S., 1749. 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

pleted, Chesterfield began preparing him for Paris. 
For the first six months Stanhope was to five in 
an academy with young Frenchmen of fashion ; 
after that, to have lodgings of his own. The 
mornings were to belong to study, or serious con- 
versation with men of learning or figure ; the 
afternoons, to exercise; the evenings to be free 
for balls, the opera, or play. These are the 
pleasures of a gentleman, for which his father is 
willing to pay generously. But he will not, he 
points out frequently, subscribe to the extrava- 
gance of a rake. The eighteen-year-old Stan- 
hope is to have his coach, his two valets and a 
footman, the very best French clothes — in fact, 
everything that is sensible. But he shall not be 
allowed money for dozens of cane-heads, or fancy 
snuff-boxes, or excessive gaming, or the support 
of opera-singers. One handsome snuff-box, one 
handsome sword, and gaming only when the 
presence of the ladies keeps down high stakes ; 
but no tavern-suppers — no low company which 
costs so much more than dissipations among one's 
equals. There is no need for a young man of 
any address to make love to his laundress,^ as 
long as ladies of his own class stoop to folly. 

Above all, Stanhope is not to associate with 
his own countrymen in Paris. On them Chester- 

1 Letter to his Son, Nov. 8, O.S., 1750. 
174 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

field is never tired of pouring the vials of scorn. 
He began while Stanhope was at Leipsic to point 
out the deficiences of English boys : 

" They are commonly twenty years old before 
they have spoken to anybody above their school- 
master, and the Fellows of their college. If they 
happen to have learning, it is only Greek and 
Latin ; but not one word of modern history, or 
modern languages. Thus prepared, they go 
abroad as they call it ; but in truth, they stay at 
home all that while; for being very awkward, 
confoundedly ashamed, and not speaking the 
languages, they go into no foreign company, at 
least none good, but dine and sup with one another 
only, at the tavern.^ . . . 

" The life of les Milords Anglais is regularly, 
or if you will, irregularly, this. As soon as they 
rise, which is very late, they breakfast together to 
the utter loss of two good morning hours. Then 
they go by coachfuls to the Palais, the Invalides, 
and Notre-Dame ; from thence to the English 
coffee-house where they make up their tavern 
party for dinner. From dinner, where they drink 
quick, they adjourn in clusters to the play, where 
they crowd up the stage, drest up in very fine 
clothes, very ill made by a Scotch or Irish tailor. 
From the play to the tavern again, where they get 

1 Letter to his Son, May lo, O.S., 1748. 

^7S 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

very drunk, and where they either quarrel among 
themselves, or sally forth, commit some riot in the 
streets, and are taken up by the watch." ^ 

To avoid these monsters, and to cultivate the best 
French society, was what a wise young man must 
do in Paris. He must establish an intimacy with 
the best French families. If he became fashion- 
able among the French, he would be fashionable 
in London. 

Chesterfield considered it best to show no eru- 
dition at Paris before the rather illiterate society 
there. As the young men were all bred for and 
put into the army at the age of twelve or thirteen, 
only the women had any knowledge of letters. 
Stanhope would find at the academy a number 
of young fellows ignorant of books, and at that 
age hasty and petulant, so that the avoidance of 
quarrels must be a young Englishman's great 
care. He will be as lively as these French boys, 
but a little wiser ; he will not reproach them with 
their ignorance, nor allow their idlenesses to break 
in on the hours he has laid aside for study. 

Such was the plan of a Grand Tour laid down 
by one of the first gentlemen of Europe. It 
remains one of the best expressions of the social 
influence of France upon England, and for that 

1 Letter to his Son, April 30, O.S., 1750. 
176 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

reason properly belongs to the seventeenth century 
more than to the Georgian era in which the letters 
were written. Chesterfield might be called the 
last of the courtiers. He believed in accomplish- 
ments and personal elegance as a means of advanc- 
ing oneself in the world, long after the Court had 
ceased to care for such qualities, or to be of much 
account in the destinies of leading Englishmen. 
Republicanism was in the air. Chesterfield was 
thinking of the France of his youth ; but France 
had changed. In 1765, Horace Walpole was 
depressed by the solemnity and austerity of French 
society. Their style of conversation was serious, 
pedantic, and seldom animated except by a dispute 
on some philosophic subject.^ In fact, Chester- 
field was admiring the France of Louis the 
Fourteenth long after " Le Soleil " had set, and 
the country was sombre. It was the eve of the 
day when France was to imitate the democratic 
ideals of England. England, at last, instead of 
being on the outskirts of civilization, was coming 
to be the most powerful, respected, and enlightened 
country in Europe. When that day dawned. 
Englishmen no longer sought the Continent in 
the spirit of the Elizabethans — the spirit which 
aimed at being " A citizen of the whole world." 

^ Letters from Paris, Sept. 22, 26; Oct. 3, 6, 1765. 
M 177 



Chapter VII 

THE DECADENCE OF THE GRAND 
TOUR. 

URING the several generations when the 
Stuarts communicated their love of 



D 



France to the aristocracy of England, 
there was, as we might suppose, a steady under- 
current of protest against this Gallic influence. 
A returning traveller would be pursued by the 
rabble of London, who, sighting his French 
periwig and foreign gestures, would pelt his 
coach with gutter-dirt, squibs, roots and rams- 
horns, and run after it shouting " French Dogs ! 
French Dogs ! A Mounser ! A Mounser ! " ^ 
Between the courtiers and the true-born English- 
man there was no great sympathy in the matter of 
foreign culture. The courtiers too often took 
towards deep-seated English customs the irreverent 
attitude of their master, Charles II. — known to 
remark that it was the roast beef and reading of 
the holy Scriptures that caused the noted sadness 
of the English.^ The true-born Englishman 

1 A Character of England, As it was lately presented in a Letter to 
a Noble Man of France, London, 1659. 

2 See Voltaire, Lettres Philosophiques, tome ii. p. 272, ed. Gustave 
Lanson, Paris, 1909. 

178 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

retorted with many a jibe at the " gay, giddy, 
brisk, insipid fool," who thought of nothing but 
clothes and garnitures, despised roast beef, and 
called his old friends ruffians and rustics ; or at 
the rake who " has not been come from France 
above three months and here he has debauch'd four 
women and fought five duels." The playwrights 
could always secure an audience by a skilful 
portrait of an " English Mounsieur " such as Sir 
Fopling Flutter, who " went to Paris a plain 
bashful English Blockhead and returned a fine 
undertaking French Fop." ^ 

1 " The merest John Trot in a week you shall see 

Bien poll, bien frize, tout a fait un Marquis." 

(Samuel Foote, Dramatic Worksy vol. i. p. 47.) 

The Hon. James Howard, The English Mounsieur, London, 1674 ; 
Sir George Etherege, Sir Fopling Flutter, Love in a Tub, Act HI. 
Sc. iv. 

The Abbe le Blanc on visiting England was very indignant at the 
representation of his countrymen on the London stage: he describes 
how, " Two actors came in, one dressed in the English manner very 
decently, and the other with black eye-brows, a riband an ell long 
under his chin, a big peruke immoderately powdered, and his nose all 
bedaubed with snuff. What Englishman could not know a Frenchman 
by this ridiculous picture ? . . . But when it was found that the man 
thus equipped, being also laced down every seam of his coat, was 
nothing but a cook, the spectators were equally charmed and surprised. 
The author had taken care to make him speak all the impertinences he 
could devise. . . . There was a long criticism upon our manners, our 
customs and above all, our cookery. The excellence and virtues of 
English beef were cried up ; the author maintained that it was owing 
to the quality of its juice that the English were so courageous, and had 

179 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

There had always been a protest against foreign 
influence, but in the eighteenth century one can- 
not fail to notice a stronger and more contemptu- 
ous attitude than ever before. England was 
feeling her power. War with France sharpened 
the shafts of satire, and every victory over the 
French increased a strong insular patriotism in 
all classes. Foote declared residence in Paris a 
necessary part of every man of fashion's education, 
because it " Gives 'em a relish for their own 
domestic happiness and a proper veneration for 
their own national liberties." ^ His Epilogue to 
The Englishman in Paris commends the prudence 
of British forefathers who 

" Scorned to truck for base unmanly arts, 
Their native plainness and their honest hearts." ^ 

It was not the populace alone, or those who 
appealed directly to the populace, who sneered at 
Popish countries, and pitied them for not being 
British."^ As time went on Whigs of all classes 
boasted of the superiority of England, especially 
when they travelled in Europe. 

such a solidity of understanding which raised them above all the nations 
of Europe " (E. Smith, Foreign Visitors in England, London, 1889, 

PP- 193-4)- 

1 Samuel Foote, Dramatic Works, vol, i. p. 7. 

2 Ibid. 

^ " Let Paris be the theme of Gallia's Muse 

Where Slav'ry treads the Streets in wooden shoes." 

(Gay, Trivia.) 

180 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

" We envy not the warmer clime that lies 
In ten degrees of more indulgent skies . . . 
'Tis Liberty that crowns Britannia's Isle 
And makes her barren rocks and her bleak mountains smile." ^ 

Addison's travels are full of reflections of this 
sort. The destitution of the Campagna of Rome 
demonstrates triumphantly what an aversion man- 
kind has to arbitrary government, while the well- 
populated mountain of St Marino shows what a 
natural love they have for liberty. Whigs abroad 
were well caricatured by Smollett in Peregrine 
Pickle in the figures of the Painter and the 
Doctor. They observed that even the horses and 
dogs in France were starved ; whereupon the 
Governor of Peregrine, an Oxonian and a 
Jacobite, sneered that they talked like true 
Englishmen. The Doctor, affronted by the in- 
sinuation, told him with some warmth that he 
was wrong in his conjecture, " his affections and 
ideas being confined to no particular country ; for 
he considered himself as a citizen of the world. 
He owned himself more attached to England than 
to any other kingdom, but this preference was the 
effect of reflection and not of prejudice." 

This growing conviction of England's superiority 
helped to bring about the decadence of travel for 
education. Travel continued, and the eighteenth 

1 Joseph Addison, A Letter from Italy, London, 1709. 

181 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

century was as noticeable as any other for the 
" mal du pays" which attacked young men, but 
travel became the tour of curiosity and diversion 
with which we are familiar, and not an earnest 
endeavour to become *' a compleat person." Many 
changes helped this decadence. The " policy " of 
Italy and France, which once attracted the embryo 
statesmen of Elizabeth, was now well known and 
needed no further study. With the passing of 
the Stuarts, when the king's favour ceased to be 
the means of making one's fortune, a courtly 
education was no longer profitable. High offices 
under the Georges were as often as not filled by 
unpolished Englishmen extolled for their native 
flavour of bluntness and bluffness. Foreign graces 
were a superfluous ornament, more or less ridicu- 
lous. The majority of Englishmen were wont to 
prize, as Sam Johnson did, " their rustic grandeur 
and their surly grace," and to join in his lament : 

♦' Lost in thoughtless ease and empty show, 
Behold the warrior dwindled to a beau ; 
Sense, freedom, piety refined away, 
Of France the mimick and of Spain the prey." ^ 

A large section of society was inimical to the 
kind of education that the Earl of Chesterfield 
prescribed for his son. The earl was well aware 
of it, indeed, and marked with repugnance divers 

1 Samuel Johnson, London : A Poem, 
182 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

young bucks of his day with leathern breeches and 
unpowdered hair, who would exclaim ; " Damn 
these finical outlandish airs, give me a manly 
resolute manner. They make a rout with their 
graces, and talk like a parcel of dancing masters, 
and dress like a parcel of fops ; one good English- 
man will beat three of them." ^ 

Even during the height of the Grand Tour in 
the latter half of the seventeenth century, thought- 
ful minds, observing the effects of a foreign educa- 
tion as seen not only in the courtiers of Charles II., 
but in the dozens of obscure country gentlemen 
who painfully sought to acquire the habit of a 
Parisian Marquis by education abroad, noticed the 
weak points of such a system. The Earl of 
Clarendon thought it pernicious to send boys 
abroad until after they had gone through Oxford 
or Cambridge. There was no necessity for their 
getting the French accent at an early age, " as if 
we had no mind to be suspected to be English- 
men." That took them from their own country 
at just the age when they ought to have severe 
mental discipline, for the lack of which no amount 
of social training would make them competent 
men. " They return from travel with a wonderful 
confidence which may very well be called impu- 

* Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, Letters to his Son, 
London, 1774 ; vol. ii. p. 123 ; vol. iii. p. 308. 

•83 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

dence ... all their learning is in wearing their 
clothes well ; they have very much without their 
heads, very little within ; and they are very much 
more solicitous that their periwigs fit handsomely, 
than to speak discreetly ; they laugh at what they 
do not understand, which understanding so little, 
makes their laughter very immoderate. When 
they have been at home two or three years, which 
they spend in the vanities which they brought 
over with them, fresh travellers arrive with newer 
fashions, and the same confidence, and are looked 
upon as finer gentlemen, and wear their ribbons 
more gracefully ; at which the others are angry, 
quit the stage, and would fain get into wiser com- 
pany, where they every day find defects in them- 
selves, which they owe to the ill spending that 
time when they thought only of being fine 
gentlemen." ^ 

When these products of a French education 
could not remain in town, but were obliged to 
live on their estates amid rough country squires, 
it went hard with them. " They will by no 
means embrace our way," says The Country 
Gentleman in Clarendon's Dialogue of the Want 
of Respect Due to Age^ " but receive us with 
cringes and treat us with set speeches, and com- 

1 Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, A Dialogue concerning Educa- 
tion, in A Collection of Several Tracts, London, 1727. 

184 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

plain how much it rains, that they cannot keep 
their hair dry, or their linnen handsome one hour. 
They talk how much a better country France is 
and how much they eat and drink better there, 
which our neighbors will not believe, and laugh 
at them for saying so. They by no means endure 
our exercises of hunting and hawking, nor indeed 
can their tender bodies endure those violent 
motions. They have a guitar or some other 
fiddle, which they play upon commonly an hour 
or so in their beds before they rise, and have at 
least one French fellow to wait upon them, to 
shave them, and comb their periwig ; and he is 
sent into the kitchen to dress some little dish, or 
to make some sauce for dinner, whom the cook is 
hardly restrained from throwing into the fire. In 
a word, they live to and within themselves, and 
their nearest neighbors do not know whether they 
eat and drink or no." ^ 

Not only were the recreations of their country 
neighbours violent and unrefined, according to the 
English Messieurs, but that preoccupation with 
local government, which was the chief duty of the 
country gentleman, was beyond the capacity of 
those who by living abroad had learned little of 
the laws and customs of their own country. 
Clarendon draws a sad picture of the return of the 

1 Ibid., Dialogue of The Want of Respect Due to Age, pp. 295-6. 

185 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

native who was ashamed to be present at the 
public and private meetings for the administration 
of justice, because he had spent in dancing the 
time when he might have been storing knowledge, 
and who now passed his days a-bed, reading 
French romances of which he was tired. 

Locke also set forth the fallacies of the Grand 
Tour in his Essay of Education. He admitted 
that fencing and riding the Great Horse were 
looked upon as " so necessary parts of breeding 
that it would be thought a great omission to 
neglect them," but he questioned whether riding 
the Great Horse was " of moment enough to be 
made a business of." ^ Fencing, he pointed out, 
has very little to do with civil life, and is of no 
use in real warfare, while music " wastes so much 
of a young man's time, to gain but a moderate 
skill in it, and engages often in such odd company, 
that many think it much better spared." ^ But 
the feature of travel which was most mercilessly 
analysed by Locke was the Governor. He ex- 
posed the futility of sending a boy abroad to gain 
experience and to mingle with good society while 
he was so young as to need a guardian. For at 
the age when most boys were abroad — that is, 
from sixteen to twenty-two — they thought them- 

1 John Locke, Some Thoughts concerning Education, London, 1699, 
PP- 356-7* 375-7- 
186 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

selves too much men to be governed by others, 
and yet had not experience and prudence enough 
to govern themselves. Under the shelter of a 
Governor they were excused from being account- 
able for their own conduct and very seldom 
troubled themselves with inquiries or with making 
useful observations of their own. 

While the Governor robbed his pupil of life's 
responsibilities on one hand, he hampered him, 
on the other, in any efforts to get into good 
company : 

" I ask amongst our young men that go abroad 
under tutors what one is there of an hundred, that 
ever visits any person of quality ? much less 
makes an acquaintance with such from whose con- 
versation he may learn what is good breeding in 
that country and what is worth observation in it. 
. . . Nor indeed is it to be wondered. For men 
of worth and parts will not easily admit the 
familiarity of boys who yet need the care of a 
tutor : though a young gentleman and stranger, 
appearing like a man, and shewing a desire to 
inform himself in the customs, laws, and govern- 
ment of the country he is in, will find welcome, 
assistance and entertainment everywhere." ^ 

These, and many comments of the same sort 
from other observers, made for the disintegration 

1 Ibid. 

187 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

of the Grand Tour, and cast discredit upon it as 
a mode of education. Locke was not the only 
person who exposed the ineffectiveness of governors. 
They became a favourite subject of satire in the 
eighteenth century. Though even the best sort 
of " maitre d'ours " or " bear- master," as the 
French called him, robbed travel of its proper 
effect, the best were seldom available for the hosts 
ot boyish travellers. Generally the family chaplain 
was chosen, because of his cheapness, and this un- 
fortunate was expected to restrain the boisterous 
devilment of the Peregrine Pickle committed to 
his care.^ A booklet called The Bear-Leaders ; 
or, Modern Travelling Stated in a Proper Light ^ 
sums up a biting condemnation of " our rugged 
unsocial Telemachuses and their unpolished Men- 
tors," describing how someone in orders, perhaps a 
family dependent, is chosen as the Governor of 
the crude unprepared mortal embarking for a tour 
of Europe. " The Oddities, when introduced to 

^ As Cowper says in The Progress of Error : 

" From school to Cam or Isis, and thence home : 
And thence with all convenient speed to Rome. 
With reverend tutor clad in habit lay. 
To tease for cash and quarrel with all day : 
With memorandum-book for every town, 
And every post, and where the chaise broke down." 
Foote's play, yin Evglishman in Paris, represents in the character of 
the pedantic prig named Clavssick, the sort of university tutor who was 
sometimes substituted for the parson, as an appropriate guardian. 

188 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

each other, start back with mutual Astonishment, 
but after some time from a frequency of seeing, 
grow into a Coarse Fondness one for the other, 
expressed by Horse Laughs, or intimated by alter- 
nate Thumps on the Back, with all such other 
gentle insinuations of our uncivilized Male 



ens. 



55 1 



Hoyd 

Small wonder, therefore, that a youth, who 
returned from driving by post-chaise through the 
principal towns of Europe in the company of 
a meek chaplain,'^ returned from his tour about 
as much refined, according to Congreve, " as a 
Dutch skipper from a whale-fishing." ^ The 
whole idea of the Grand Tour was thrown into 
disrepute after its adoption by crude and low-bred 
people, who thought it necessary to inform all 
their acquaintance where they had been, by a 
very unbecoming dress and a very awkward 
address : " not knowing that an Englishman's 
beef-and-pudding face will not agree with a hat 
no bigger than a trencher ; and that a man who 

1 The Bear- Leaders, London, 1758. 

2 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu met many of these pairs at Rome, 
where she writes that, by herding together and throwing away their 
money on worthless objects, they had acquired the title of Golden 
Asses, and that Goldoni adorned his dramas with "gli milordi Inglesi" 
in the same manner as Moliere represented his Parisian marquises 
{^Letters, ed. WharndifFe, London, 1893, vol. ii. p. 327). 

3 William Congreve, The Way of the World, Act III. So. xv. 

189 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

never learned to make a bow performs it worse in 
a head of hair dressed a L'aille Pidgeon, than in a 
scratch wig." ^ 

In many other ways, also, travel lost its dignity 
in the eighteenth century. It was no longer 
necessary to live in foreign countries to under- 
stand them. With the foundation of the chairs 
of modern history at Oxford and Cambridge by 
King George the First in 1724, one great reason 
for travel was lost. Information about con- 
temporary politics on the Continent could be had 
through the increasing number of news-journals 
and gazettes. As for learning the French lan- 
guage, there had been no lack of competent 
teachers since the Revocation of the Edict of 
Nantes in 1685 ^^^^ French Protestant refugees 
swarming across the channel to find some sort 
of living in England. Therefore the spirit of 
acquisitiveness dwindled and died down, in the 
absence of any strong need to study abroad, and 
an idle, frivolous, darting, capricious spirit con- 
trolled the aristocratic tourist. Horace Walpole 
on his travels spent his time in a way that would 
have been censured by the Elizabethans. He 
rushed everywhere, played cards, danced through 
the streets of Rheims before the ladies' coaches, 

1 Philip Thicknesse, Observations on the Customs and Manners of the 
French Nation, London, 1766, p. 3. 

190 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

and hailed with dehght every acquaintance from 
England. What would Sir Philip Sidney have 
thought of the mode of life Walpole draws in this 
letter : 

" About two days ago, about four o'clock in 
the afternoon ... as we were picking our teeth 
round a littered table and in a crumby room, 
Gray ^ in an undress, Mr Conway in a morning- 
grey coat and I in a trim white night-gown and 
slippers, very much out of order, with a very 
little cold, a message discomposed us all of a 
sudden, with a service to Mr Walpole from Mr 
More, and that, if he pleased, he would wait on 
Mr Walpole. We scuttle upstairs in great con- 
fusion, but with no other damage than the flinging 
down two or three glasses and the dropping a 
slipper by the way. Having ordered the room to 
be cleaned out, and sent a very civil response to 
Mr More, we began to consider who Mr More 
might be." ^ 

In the tour of Walpole and Gray one may see 
a change in the interest of travel ; how the 
romantic spirit had already ousted the humanistic 
love of men and cities. As he drifted through 
Europe Gray took little interest in history or in 

1 Thomas Gray the poet. 

2 Horace Walpole, Letters, ed. Cunningham, London, 1891, vol. i. 
p. 24. 

191 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

the intricacies of human character. He would 
not be bothered by going to Courts with Walpole, 
or if he did he stood in the corner of the ball- 
room and looked on while Walpole danced. 
What he cared for was La Grande Chartreuse, 
with its cliffs and pines and torrents and hanging 
woods. ^ He is the forerunner of the Byronic 
traveller who delighted in the terrific aspects of 
nature and disdained mankind. Different indeed 
was the genial heart of Howell, who was at pains 
to hire lodgings in Paris with windows opening 
on the street, that he might study every passer- 
by,^ but who spoke of mountains in Spain in a 
casual way as " not so high and hideous as the 
Alps," or as " uncouth, huge, monstrous Excres- 
cences of Nature, bearing nothing but craggy 
stones.^ 

With the decline of enthusiasm over the serious 

^ Thomas Gray, Letters, ed. Tovey, Cambridge University Press, 
1890, pp. 38, 44, 68. 

2 James Howell, Instructions for Forraine Traiiell, p. 25 (Arber 
Reprint) . 

^ Ilid.^ Epistol/e Ho-Ellana, ed. Jacobs, 1892, vol. i. p. 95. 

The Renaissance traveller had little commendation for a land that 
was not fruitful, rich with grains and orchards. A landscape that 
suggested food was to him the fairest landscape under heaven. Far 
from being an admirer of mountains, he was of the opinion of Dr 
Johnson that " an eye accustomed to flowery pastures and waving 
harvests is astonished and repelled by this wide extent of hopeless 
sterility " and that "this uniformity of barrenness can afford very little 
amusement to the traveller" [Works, ed. 1787, vol. x. p. 359). 

192 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

advantages of travel, there was not much demand 
for those essays on the duties of the student 
abroad which we have tried to describe. By the 
eighteenth century, hand-books for travellers were 
much the same as those with which we are to-day 
familiar ; that is, a guide-book describing the 
particular objects to be inspected, and the sensa- 
tions they ought to inspire, together with ex- 
ceedingly careful notes as to the price of meals 
and transportation. This sort of manual became 
necessary when travel grew to be the recreation 
of men of moderate education who could not read 
the local guide-books written in the language of 
the country they visited. Compilations such as 
the Itinerar'ium Italic of Schottus, published at 
Antwerp in 1600, and issued in eleven editions 
during the seventeenth century, had been sufficient 
for the accomplished traveller of the Renaissance.^ 

1 Itinerant Italia Rerumq. Romanorum lilr'i tres a Franc. Schotto 
I.e. ex antiquis novisque Scriptoribus iis editi qui Romam anno 
lubileii sacro visunt. Ad Robertum Bellarminum S.R.E. Card. 
Ampliss. Antverpise. Ex officina Plantiniana apud Joannem More- 
turn. Anno sascularii sacro, 1600. 

Thomas Cecil in Paris in 1562 studied the richly illustrated 
Cosmographia Universalis of Sebastien Munster (pub. Basel 1550) 
which gave descriptions of " Omnium gentium mores, leges, religio, res 
gestae, mutationes." 

Sir Thomas Browne recommends to his son in France in 1661 Les 
Antiquities de Paris *' which will direct you in many things, what to 
look after, that little time you stay there " (^IVorks^ ed. Wilkin, 1846, 
vol. i. p. 16). 

N 193 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

France, as the centre of travel, produced the 
greatest number of handy manuals,^ and it was 
from these, doubtless, that Richard Lassels drew 
the idea of composing a similar work in the 
English language, which would comprise the 
exhortation to travel, in the manner of Turler, 
with a continental guide to objects of art. The 
Voyage of Italy by Lassels, published in Paris in 
1670, marks the beginning of guide-books in 
English. 

Still, in succeeding vade-mecums there are some 
occasional echoes of the old injunctions to improve 
one's time. Misson's A New Voyage to Italy^ 
maps out some intellectual duties. According to 
Misson a voyager ought to carry along with him 
a cane divided into several measures, or a piece of 

1 Such as : [a) La Guide des Chemins : pour aller et venir par tous 
les pays et contrees du Royaume de France. Avec les noms des 
Fleuves et Rivieres qui courent parmy lesdicts pays. A. Paris (n.d.) 

(1552?)- 

(^) Deliciis Gall'ta, sive Itinerarium per universam Galliam. Colonias, 
1608. 

[c) lodoc't Sincert Itinerarium Gallia, Ita accomodatum, ut eius 
ductu mediocri tempore tota Gallia obiri, Anglia et Belgium adire pos- 
suit : nee bis terve ad eadum loca rediri oporteat : De Burdigala, 
Lugduni, i6t6. 

(^) Le Voyage de France Dresse pour I'instruction et commodite tant 
des Francals que des Estrangers. Paris, chez Olivier de Varennes, 
1639. 

2 Maximilian Misson, A New Voyage to Italy ; Together with 
Useful Instructions for those who shall Travel thither, 2 vols., London, 
1695. 

194 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

pack-thread well twined and waxed, fifty fathom 
long and divided into feet by knots, so as to be 
able to measure the height of the towers and the 
bigness of pillars and the dimensions of everything 
so far as he is able. This seems sufficiently 
laborious, but it makes for an easy life compared 
to the one prescribed by Count Leopold Berchtold 
in his Essay to Direct a7id Kxtend the Inquiries 
of Patriotic Travellers. He would have one 
observe the laws and customs of foreigners with a 
curiosity that would extend to every department 
of social and economic life, beginning with 
"" Causes of the Decrease of Population and 
Remedies to prevent them " ; proceeding to such 
matters as the state of the peasantry ; to questions 
applicable to manuring, ploughing, and the hous- 
ing of black cattle ; or to an " Inquiry concerning 
Charitable Institutions such as one for recovering 
Drowned and Strangled Persons " ; or to the 
** Extent of Liberty to Grown-up Young Ladies." 
In case the traveller is at a loss how to conduct 
his investigation, a list of particular questions on 
the topics for study is added by the author. A 
few random examples of this list are: 

" Which are the favourite herbs of the sheep of 
this country ? " 

"Are there many instances of people having 
been bit by mad animals ? " 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

" Is the state of a bachelor aggravated and 
rendered less desirable ? By what means ? " 

'* How much is paid per day for ploughing 
with two oxen ? With two horses ? " 

" Which food has been experienced to be most 
portable and most nourishing for keeping a 
distressed ship's crew from starving ? " 

" What is the value of whales of different 
sizes ? " 

In addition to such inquiries Berchtold ^ urges 
the necessity of sketching landscapes and costumes, 
and better yet, the scientific drawing of engines 
and complicated machines, and also of acquiring 
skill on some musical instrument, to keep one 
from the gaming table in one's idle hours, pre- 
ferably of learning to play on a portable instru- 
ment, such as a German flute. Journals, it goes 
without saying, must be written every night 
before the traveller goes to sleep. 

It is not only the fact of their being addressed 
to persons of small intelligence which makes the 
guide-books of the eighteenth century seem 
ridiculous ; another reason for their ignoble tone 
is the increased emphasis they lay on the material 
convenience of the traveller. Not the service of 
one's country or the perfecting of one's character 

1 Count Leopold Berchtold, An Essay to Direct and Extend the 
Inquiries of Patriotic Travellers, London, 1789. 

196 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

is the note of Georgian injunctions, but the fear 
of being cheated and of being sick. Misson's 
instructions begin at once with praise of fixed 
rates in Holland, where one is spared the exhaus- 
tion of wrangling. The exact fare from Cologne 
to Maintz is his next subject, and how one can 
hire a coach and six horses for three crowns a day ; 
how the best inns at Venice are The Louvre, The 
White Lion, and The French Arms ; how one 
can stay at The Louvre for eight livres a day and 
pay seven or eight livres for a gondola by the 
day, and so forth ; with similar useful but 
uninspired matter. Next he discusses sea-sickness, 
and informs us that the best remedy is to keep 
always, night and day, a piece of earth under the 
nose; for which purpose you should provide a 
sufficient quantity of earth and preserve it fresh 
in a pot of clay ; and when you have used a piece 
so long that it begins to grow dry, put it again 
into the pot, and take out some fresh earth. ^ 

Berchtold's suggestions for comfort are even 
more elaborate. One should carry everywhere : 

" A bottle of vinegar, de quatre voleurs. 
Ditto best French Brandy. 
Ditto spirit of Salmiac, against fits. 
Ditto Hoffman's Drops." 

1 MissoD, op. cit., vol. ii. p. 335. 

197 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

At inns it is advisable to air the room by- 
throwing a little strong vinegar upon a red hot 
shovel, and to bring your bed-clothes with you. 
As a guard against robbers it is advisable to have 
your servant sleep in the same room with you, 
keep a wax candle burning all night, and look 
into the chests and behind the bed before retiring. 
Pocket door-bolts in the form of a cross are easily 
obtainable ; if not, put the tables and chair against 
the door. 

There is something fussy about such a traveller, 
though robbers undoubtedly were to be feared, 
even in the eighteenth century,^ and though inns 
were undoubtedly dirty. A repugnance to dirt 
and discomfort is justifiable enough, but there is 
something especially peevish in the tone of many 
Georgian travellers. Sam Sharp's Letters from 
Italy breathe only sorrow, disillusion and indigna- 
tion. Italian beds and vermin, Italian post-boys 
and their sorry nags are too frequently the theme 
of his discourse. He even assures us that the 
young gentlemen whom he had always pictured 
as highly delighted by the Grand Tour are in 

1 See Hearne's Collections, vol. vili., being vol. 1. of publications 
of The Oxford Historical Society, pp. ii8, 133, 201, for the account 
of an assault by six highwaymen upon two gentlemen with their 
servants on the way from Calais, in September 1723. Defoe wrote 
a tract on the subject, and it was treated in Boyer's Political State, and 
in other periodicals of the time. 

198 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

reality very homesick for England. They are 
weary of the interminable drives and interminable 
conversazioni of Italy and long for the fox- 
hunting of Great Britain.^ Fielding's account of 
his voyage to Lisbon contains too much about 
his wife's toothache and his own dropsy.^ 
Smollett, like Fielding, was a sick man at the 
time of his travels, and we can excuse his rage 
at the unswept floors, old rotten tables, crazy 
chairs and beds so disgusting that he generally 
wrapped himself in a great-coat and lay upon 
four chairs with a leathern portmanteau for 
a pillow ; but we cannot admire a man who is 
embittered by the fact that he cannot get milk 
to put in his tea, and is continually thrusting his 
head out of the window to curse at the post-boys, 
or pulling out his post-book to read to an inn- 
yard with savage vociferation the article which 
orders that the traveller who comes first shall be 
first served.^ 

This is a degeneration from the undaunted 
mettle of the Elizabethans, who, though acquainted 
with dirty inns and cheating landlords, kept their 
spirits soaring above the material dilhculties of 
travel. We miss, in eighteenth century accounts, 

1 Letters from Italy, to which is annexed, An Admonition to 
Gentlemen ivho pass the Alps, London, 1767, pp. 44, 65, 172, 306. 

2 Henry Fielding, The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon. 

3 Tobias Smollett, Works, ed. 1887, p. 709. 

199 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

the gaiety of Roger Ascham's Report of Germany 
and of the fair barge with goodly glass windows 
in which he went up the Rhine — gaiety which 
does not fail even when he had to spend the 
night in the barge, with his tired head on his 
saddle for a bolster.^ We miss the spirit of good 
fellowship with which John Taylor, the Water 
Poet, shared with six strangers in the coach from 
Hamburgh the ribs of roast beef brought with 
him from Great Britain.^ Vastly diverting as 
the eighteenth-century travel-books sometimes 
are, there is nothing in them that warms the 
heart like the travels of poor Tom Coryat, that 
infatuated tourist, chief of the tribe of Gad, whom 
nothing daunted in his determination to see the 
world. Often he slept in wagons and in open 
skiffs, and though he could not afford to hire the 
guides with Sedan chairs who took men over the 
Alpine passes in those days, yet he followed them 
on foot, panting.^ 

1 Roger Ascham, Works ^ ed. Giles, London, 1865, vol. i. 
part ii. p. 253. 

2 All the Works of John Taylor the Water Poet, being sixty-three in 
number, collected into one volume by the Author, London, 1630. 
See p. 76, Three Weekes, three Dayes^ and three Houres Observations 

from London to Hamburgh in Germanie , . . dedicated to Sr. Thomas 
Coriat, Great Brittaines Error, and the World's Mirror, Aug. 17, 
1616. 

^ Coryat' s Crudities, Glasgow, 1905, vol. i. pp. 216, 226, 
255; vol. ii. pp. 57, 176. 

200 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

So, in spite of the fact that travel is never- 
ending, and that " peregrinatio animi causa " ot 
the sixteenth century is not very different from 
the Wanderlust of the nineteenth, we feel we 
have come to the end of the particular phase ot 
travel which had its beginning in the Renaissance. 
The passing of the courtier, the widened scope of 
the university, the rise of journalism, and the 
ascendancy of England, changed the attitude of 
the English traveller from eager acquisitiveness to 
complacent amusement. With this change of 
attitude came an end to the essay in praise of 
travel, written by scholars and gentlemen for their 
kind ; intended for him " Who, whithersoever he 
directeth his journey, travelleth for the greater 
benefit of his wit, for the commodity of his 
studies, and dexterity of his life, — he who moveth 
more in mind than in body. " ^ We hope we 
have done something to rescue these essays from 
the oblivion into which they have fallen, to show 
the social background from which they emerged, 
and to reproduce their enthusiasm for self-im- 
provement and their high-hearted contempt for 
an easy, indolent life. 

1 Hermannus Kirchnerus in Coryai' s Crudities^ vol. ii. p. 74. 



201 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

I 

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OI^ ADVICE TO 
TRAVELLERS, 1 500-1700 

1561. Gratarolus, Guilhelmus. Authore Gratarolo Guilhelmo, philosopho 
et medico, De Regimine Iter Agent'ium, vel equitum, vel peditum, 
vel navi, vel curru rheda . . . viatodbus et peregrinatoribui 
quibusque utUissimi libr't duo, nunc primum editi. Basilese, 
1561. 

1 5 70- 1. Cecil, William, Lord Burghley : Letter to Edward Manners, 
Earl of Rutland, among State Papers, Elizabeth, 1547-80, 
vol. Ixxvii. No. 6. 

1574. Turlerus, Hieronymus. De Peregrinatione et agro neapolitano, 

libri II. scripti ab Hieronymo Turlero. Omnibus peregrinantibus 
utiles ac necessarii ; ac in eorum gratiam nunc primum editi. 
Argentorati, anno 1574. 

1575. The Traveiler of Jerome Turler, divided into tzvo bookes, 

the first conteining a notable discourse of the m'aner and order of 
traveiling oversea, or into strange and foreign countries, the second 
comprehending an excellent description of the most delicious 
realme of Naples in Italy ; a work very pleasant for all persons 
to reade, and right profitable and necessarie unto all such as are 
minded to traveyll. London, 1575. 

1577. Pyrckmair, Hilarius. Commentariolus de arte apodemica seu vera 
peregrinandi ratione. Auctore Hilario Pyrckmair Landishutano. 
Ingolstadii, 1577. 

1577. Zvingerus, Theodor. Methodus apodemica in eorum gratiam qui 

cum fructu in quocunq ; tandem vitce genere peregrinari cupiunty 
a Theod. Zvingero. Basiliense typis delineata, et cum aliis 
tum quatuor prcesertim Athenarum vivis exempUs illustrata. 
Basilea;, 1577. 

1578. Bourne, William. A booke called the Treasure for traveilers, 

devided into five parts, contayning very necessary matters for alt 
sortes of travailers, eyther by sea or by lande. London, 
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205 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

1578. A Regiment for the Sea, containing verie necessarie matters 

for all sortes of men and travailers : newly corrected and 
amended by Thomas Hood. London, 1578. 

1578. Lipsius, Justus. Deratione cum fructu peregrinandi, et prasertim 
in Italia. (In Epistola ad Ph. Lanoyum.) Justi Lipsii 
Epistolce Selective : fol. 106. Parisiis, 1610. 

1580. Sidney. Sir Philip Sidney to his brother Robert Sidney when 
he was on his travels ; advising him what circuit to take ; 
how to behave, what authors to read, etc. In Letters and 
Memorials of State, collected by Arthur Collins. London, 
1746. 

1587. Pighius (Stephanus Vinandus). Hercules Prodicius, seuprincipis 
juventutis vita et peregrinatio. Ex ofRcina C. Plantini. 
Antverpi^, 1587. 

1587. Meierus, Albertus. Methodus describendi regiones, urbes et arces, 
et quid singulis locis prt£cipue in peregrinationibus homines nobiles 
ac docti animadvertere, observare et annotare debeant. Per 
M. Albertum Meierum. Helmstadii, 1587. 

1589. Certaine brief e and speciall instructions for gentlemen, mer- 
chants, students, souldiers, marriners . . . employed in services 
abroad or anie way occasioned to converse in the kingdomes and 
governementes of forren princes. London, 1589. (Trans- 
lation by Philip Jones.) 

1592. Stradling, Sir John. A Direction for Travailers taken out of 
Justus Lipsius and enlarged for the behoofe of the right honorable 
Lord, the young Earle of Bedford, being nozv ready to travell. 
London, 1592. 

1595. Devereux, Robert, Earl of Essex (or Bacon ?). Harl. MS. 
6265, p. 428. Profitable instructions, for Roger Manners, 
Earl of Rutland. 

1595 (?). Davison, William (Secretary of Queen Elizabeth.) Harl. 
MS. 6893. Instructions for Travel. 

1598. Loysius, Georgius. G. Loysii Curiovoitlandi Pervigilium Mercurii, 
quo agitur de prastantissimis peregrinantis virtutibus, . . . 
Curiae Variscorum, 1598. 

1598. Dallington, Sir Robert. A Method for Travell, shezved by 
taking the viezv of France as it stoode in the yeare of our Lord, 
1598. N.D., London, printed by Thomas Creede. 

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c. 1 600. A True Description and Direction of what is most worthy to be 
seen in all Italy. Anon., n.d. Harleian Miscellany, vol. v. 
No. 128. 

1 604. Pitsius, Joannes. loannis Pitsii Anglii Sacra Theologice Doctoris 
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1605 (?). Neugebauer, Salomon. Tractatus de peregrinatione . . . 
historicis, ethicis, politicisque exemplis illustratus . . . cum indice 
rerum et exemplorum. Basileas. 

1606. Palmer, Thomas. An Essay of the Meanes how to make our 
Travailes into forralne Countries the more profitable and honour- 
able. London, 1606. 

1608. Ranzovinus, Henricus Count. Methodus apodemica seu 

peregrinandi perlustrandique regiones, urbes et arces ratio . . . 
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1609. Greville, Fulke, Lord Brooke. J Letter of Travell, to his 

cousin Greville Varney. (In Certaine Learned and Elegant 
Works of the Right Honorable Fulke, Lord Brooke. London, 
1633-) 
1 6 1 1 . Kirchnerus, Hermannus. An Oration made by Hermannus 
Kirchnerus . . . concerning this subject ; that young men ought 
to travell into forraine country es, and all those that desire the 
praise of learning and atchieving worthy actions both at home and 
abroad. (In Coryafs Crudities, London, 1 6 1 1 .) 

1616. Sincerus, lodocus. Itinerarium Galliee, ita accommodatum, ut 

eius ductu mediocri tempore tota Gallia obiri, Anglia et Belgium 
adiri possint ; nee bis terve ad eadem loca rediri oporteat ; 
notatis cuiusque loci, quas vocant, deliciis. Lugduni, 161 6. 

1 61 7. Moryson, Fynes. Of Travel in General; Of Precepts for 

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Glasgovir, 1907.) 

1622. Peacham, Henry. The Compleat Gentleman. 1634 •^'^•> 
reprinted in Tudor and Stuart Library by Clarendon Press, 
with introduction by G. S. Gordon. Oxford, 1906. 

1625. Bacon, Francis. Of Travel. In Works. Ed. James Spedding. 
London, 1859. 

1 63 1 . Erpenius, Thomas. De Peregrinatione Gallica utiliter instituenda 
Tractatus. Lugduni Batavorum, 163 1. 

207 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

1633. Devereux, Robert, Earl of Essex. Profitable Instructtom : De- 
scribing what speciall Observations are to be taken by Travellers 
in all Nations, States and Countries ; Pleasant and Profitable. 
By the three much admired, Robert, Late Earl of Essex, Sir 
Philip Sidney and Secretary Davison. London, 1633. 

1637. Wotton, Sir Henry. Letter of Instruction to John Milton, 
about to travel. In Life and Letters, c^. by Pearsall Smith. 
Oxford, 1907. 

1639. Le Voyage de Trance, Dresse pour P ifistruction etcommodite tant des 
Francois, que des Estrangers. Paris, 1639. (Du Verdier.) 

1 642 . Howell, James. Instructions for Forreine Travell, Shewing by 
what cours, and in what compasse of time, one may take an 
exact Survey of the Kingdomes and States of Christendome, and 
arrive to the practicall knowledge of the Languages, to good 
purpose. London, 1642. 

1652. Evelyn, John. The State of France as it stood in the IXth yeer 

of this present Monarch, Lewis XIllI. Written to a Friend 
by J. E. London, 1652. (Discussion of travel in the 
preface.) 

1653. Zeiler, Martin. Fidus Achates qui itineris sui socium . . . non 

tantum de locorum . . . situ, veruni etiam, quid in plerisque 
spectatu . . . dignum occurrat . . . monet . . . Nunc e 
Germanico Latinus f actus a quodam Apodemophilo . . . . 
Ulmas, 1653. 

1656. Osborn, Francis. Travel, in Advice to a Son. Ed. E. A. 
Parry. London, 1896. 

1662. Hov^^ell, James. A New English Grammar, whereimto is annexed 
A Discours or Dialog containing a Perambulation of Spain and 
Portugall which may serve for a direction how to travell through 
both Countreys. London, 1662. 

c. 1665. Hyde, Edward, Earl of Clarendon. A Dialogue concerning 
Education in A Collection of Several Tracts. London, 1727. 

1665. Gerbier, Balthazar, Knight; Master of the Ceremonies to 
King Charles the First. Subsidium Peregrinantibus or An 
Assistance to a Traveller in his Convers . . . directing him, 
after the latest Mode, to the greatest Honour, Pleasure, Security, 
and Advantage in his Travells. Written to a Princely 
Traveller for a Fade Mecum. Oxford, 1665 . 

208 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

1670: Lassels, Richard; The Voyage of Italy or a Compleat Journey 
through Italy. . . . With Instructions concerning Travel ; by 
Richard Lassels, Gent., who travelled through Italy Five 
times, as Tutor to several of the English Nobility and 
Gentry. Never before Extant. Newly printed at Paris 
and are to be sold in London by John Starkey. 1670, 

1670. J Letter of Advice to a young Gentleman Leaving the 

University, concerning his behavior and conversation in the 
World, by R(ichard) L(assels). Dublin, 1670. 

1 67 1. Leigh, Edward. Three Diatribes or Discourses ; First of Travel, 

or a Guide Jor Travellers into Foreign Parts ; Secondly, of 
Money or Coyns ; Thirdly, of Measuring the Distance betwixt 
Place and Place. London, 1671. 

1678. Gailhard, J. (Who hath been Tutor Abroad to severall of 
the Nobility and Gentry.) The Compleat Gentleman : or 
Directions for the Education of Youth as to their Breeding at 
Home and Travelling Abroad. London, 1678. 

1693. Locke, John. Some Thoughts concerning Education. Fourth 
Edition. London, 1699. 

1688. A Letter of Advice to a Young Gentleman of an Honorable Family, 
now in his Travels beyond the Seas : for his more safe and profit- 
able conduct in the three great Instances, of Study, Moral 
Deportment and Religion. In three parts. By a True Son 
of the Church of England. London, 1688. 

1688. Carr, Will, late Consul for the English Nation in Amsterdam. 
Remarks of the Government of severall Parts of Germanise, 
Denmark . . . but more particularly the United Provinces, 
zvith some few directions how to Travell in the States Dominions. 
Amsterdam, 1688. 

1690. The Travellers Guide and Historians Faithful Companion. 

[London ? 1 690 ?] 

1695. Misson, Maximilian. A New Voyage to Italy : With a de- 
scription of the Chief Towns . . . Together with Useful 
Instructions for those who shall Travel thither. Done into 
English, and adorn'd with Figures. 2 vols. London, 
1695. 

o 209 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 



II 

TRAVELS, MEMOIRS, LETTERS AND BIOGRAPHIES, 
1 500-1 700, USED IN THE FOREGOING CHAPTERS 

Ascham, Roger. Works. Ed. Giles. London, 1865. 

Aubrey, John. Letters written by Eminent Persons in the Seventeenth 

and Eighteenth Centuries; and Lives of Eminent Men. 

London, 1813. 
D'Aunoy, Marie Catherine Jumelle de Berneville, Comtesse. 

Relation du Voyage WEspagne. A La Haye, 1691. 

The Ingenious and Diverting Letters of the Lady . . . Travels into 

Zpain. 2nd Ed. London, 1692. 

Belvoir MSS. (Hist. MSS. Comm. 1 2th Report ; Appendix, 
Part IV. MSS. of the Duke of PvUtland preserved at 
Belvoir Castle.) 

Bercherus, Gulielmus. Epitaphia et Inscriptiones Luguhres. A 
Gulielmo Berchero cum in Italia, animi causa, pere- 
grinaretur, coUecta. Excusum Londini, 1566. 

The Nobility of Women. Ed. Warwick Bond for Roxburghe 

Club, 1904. (Written 1559.) 

Bisticci, Vespasiano da. Vite di Uomini lllustri del secolo XV. in 
Collezione di Opere inediti rare. Firenze, 1859. 

Bodley, Sir Thomas. Life, Written by Himself. Privately reprinted 
for John Lane. London, 1894. 

Boorde, Andrew. The First Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge^ 
made by Andrew Boorde, of Physycke Doctor ; also A Com- 
pendyous Regyment, or a Dyetary ofHelth, made in Montpelier, 
compyled by Andrewe Boorde, of Physycke Doctour. Ed. F. J. 
Furnivall, for the Early English Text Society. Extra 
Series, IX.-X. London, 1869-70. 

Botero, Giovanni. The Travellers Breviat, or an historicall description 
of the most famous kingdomes in the world. Translated into 
English. London, 1601. 

A Treatise, concerning the causes of the magnificencie and greatness 

of cities, . . . now done into English by Robert Peterson of 
Lincolnes Inne, Gent. London, 1606. 

210 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

Relations of the Most Famous Kingdoms and Common-weales through 

the ivorld. . . . London, i6o8. (Translated by Robert 
Johnson.) 

Bourdeille, Pierre de, Seigneur de Brantome. Memoires, . . . Contenans 
les Anecdotes de la Cour de France, sous les Rots Henri II., 
Franfois II., Henri III. et IF. A. Leyde, 1722. 

Boyle, Robert. Works. Vol. i. {Life) and v. {Letters). London, 
1744. 

Breton, Nicholas. Works. Ed. A. B. Grosart. London, 1879. 

Grimellos Fortunes, ivith his Entertainment in his Travaile. 

London, 1604. 

Browne, Sir Thomas. Works. Ed. Simon Wilkin. London, 1836. 
(Vol. i., containing Life and Correspondence^ 

Burnet, Gilbert, ^ome Letters containing an account of ivhat seemed most 
remarkable in Switzerland, Italy, etc. (Written to the Hon. 
Robert Boyle.) Printed 1687. 

Three Letters concerning the Present State of Italy, written in the 

year 1687. Printed 1688. 

Camden, William. History or Annals of England. In A Complete 
History of England. Vol. ii. 1706. 

Carew, George. A Relation of the State of France, with the Character 
of Henry IF. and the Principal Persons of that Court. Printed 
by Thomas Birch. London, 1 749. 

Cavendish, George. Life of Thomas Wolsey (written c. 1557). 
Printed by William Morris at the Kelmscott Press, 1893. 

Cavendish, Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle. Life of . . . William 
Cavendishe, Duke of Newcastle. London, 1667. 

Life of ... the Duke of Newcastle, to which is added " The True 

Relation of my Birth, Breeding and LifeT Ed. C. H. 
Firth. London, 1906. 

Caxton, William. Dialogues in French and English. Ed. from 
text printed about 1483, by Henry Bradley, for the Early 
English Text Society. Extra Series, Ixxix. London, 1900. 

Chapman, George, Monsieur d'' Olive, in The Comedies and Tragedies 
of George Chapman. 3 vols. London, 1873. 

Clcnardus, Nicolaus. Epistolarum Lihri Duo. Antverpiae, ex officina 
Christophori Plantini, 1566. 

21 I 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

Collectanea : First Series. Ed. C. R. L. Fletcher, for the Oxford 
Historical Society. Vol. v. Oxford, 1885. 

Contarini, Gaspar. The Commonwealth and Government of Venicey 
written by the Cardinall Gaspar Contareno, and translated 
out of Italian into English by Lewes Lewkenor, Esquire, 
London, 1599. 

Coryat, Thomas. Coryafs Crudities hastily gobled up in Jive moneths 
travells in France, Savoy, Italy, Rhetia, commonly called the 
Orisons country, Helvetia alias Switzerland, some parts of high 
Germany and the 'Netherlands; newly digested in the hungry 
aire of Odcombe in the county of Somerset, and now dispersed to 
the nourishmeut of the travelling members of this kingdome. 
London, 1 6 1 1 . Reprint by James Maclehose & Sons. 
Glasgow, 1905. 

Dallington, Robert. A Survey of the Great Dukes State of Tuscany in 
the yeare of our Lord 1596. Printed for Edward Blount 
at London, 1605. 

Description Contenant les Jntiquitez, fondations et singularitez des plus 
celebres Villes, Chasteaux et Places remarquables du Royaume 
de France, avec les choses plus memorables advenues en iciluy 
(par F. Des Rues). Constance, 1608. 

Dudithius, Andreas. Vita Reginaldi Poli. Venetiis, 1558. 

Erasmus, Desiderius. Opera Omnia. Lugduni Batavorum, 1703. 
(Tomus Tertius qui complectitur epistolas.) 

Modus Orandi Deum. Basileae, 1524. 

Familiarium Colloquiorum Des. Erasmi Roterodami Opus. Basileas, 

1542. 

Evelyn, John. Diary and Correspondence. Ed. William Bray. 
London, 1906. 

Fenelon, De La Mothe. Correspondance Diplomatique. Tome Sixieme. 
Paris et Londres, 1840. 

Ferrar, Nicholas. Two Lives : By his Brother John and by Doctor 
Jebb. Ed. L E. B. Mayor. 1855. 

Florio, Giovanni. Florio, His Firste Frutes : which yeelde familiar 
speech, merie Proverbes, wittie Sentences, and golden sayings. 
Also a perfect Induction to the Italian and English tongues as in 
he Table appeareth. . Imprinted by Thomas Daivson for 
Thomas Woodcocke. London, 1578. 

-212 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

Florios Second Frutes to be gathered of twelve Trees, of divers 

but delightsome tastes to the tongues of Italians and Englishmen. 
. . . London, 1 591. 

France : The Survey or Topographical Description of France ; with a 
new Mappe. . . . Collected out of sundry approved authors ; 
very amply, truly and historically digested for the pleasure of 
those who desire to be thoroughly acquainted in the state of the 
kingdome and dominion of France. London, 1592. 

The View of France. Printed by Symon Stafford, London, 

1604. 

Fuller, Thomas. The Church-History of Britain from the Birth of Jesus 
Christ untill the year MDCXLFIII. Endeavoured by 
Thomas Fuller. London, 1655. 

History of the Worthies of England. 2 vols. London, 181 1. 

Gascoigne, George. The Posies. Ed. J. W. Cunliffe. Cambridge 
University Press, 1907. 

Gerbier, Balthazar. The Interpreter of the Academie for Forrain 
Lattguages and all Noble Sciences and Exercises. 1648. 

The First Lecture of an Introduction to Cosmographie : being a 

Description of all the World. Read Publiquely at Sir 
Balthazar Gerbier' s Academy. London, 1649. 

Sir Balthazar Gerbier* s Project for an Academy Royal in England. 

No. XXL in Collectanea Curiosa. Oxford, 1781. 

Gilbert, Sir Humphrey. Queene EUzabethes Achademy. Ed. by 
F. J. Furnivall for the Early English Text Society. Extra 
Series VIIL London, 1869. 

Goodall, Baptist. The Tryall of Travell. London, 1630. 

Googe, Barnaby. Eglogs, Epytaphes and Sonettes. 1563. 

The Zodiake of Life written by . . . Pallingenius . . . newly trans- 

lated into EngUshe verse by Barnabe Googe. London, 1565. 

Greene, Robert. Greene's Mourning Garment, The Carde of Fancie, 
and Mamillia ; in Life and Complete Works in Prose and 
Verse. 12 vols. Ed. A. B. Grosart for the Huth 
Library, 1881-83. 

Greville, Fulke, Lord Brooke. Life of the Renowned Sir Philip 
Sidney. . . . Written by . . . his Companion and Friend. 
London, 1652. 

213 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

Life of Sir Philip Sidney. Tudor and Stuart Library. Oxford, 

1907. 

Guide des Chemins, pour aller et venir par tons les pays et contries du 
Royaume de France, avec les noms des Fleuves et Rivieres qui 
courent parmy lesdictspays. Paris (1552). (Par C. Estienne.) 

Hall, Arthur. A Letter sent by F. A. touching the proceedings in a 
private quarrell and unkindnesse between Arthur Hall and 
Melchisedich Mallerie, Gentleman, to his very friend L. B. 
being in Italy. (Printed in Antiqua Anglicana, vol. i. 
London, 181 5.) 

Hall, Edward. Lije of Henry VIII. Reprint with an introduction 
by Charles Whibley. London, 1904. 

Hall, Joseph. Quo Vadis ? A Just Censure of Travell as it is under- 
taken by the Gentlemen of our "Nation. London, 1 61 7. Re- 
printed in Works. Ed. P. Wynter, for the Clarendon 
Press. Oxford, 1863. 

Hamilton, le Comte Antoine. Memoires du Comte de Grammont. 
Nouvelle Edition Augmentee de Notes et Eclairissements 
necessaires par M. Horace Walpole. Imprimee a Straw- 
berry Hill, 1772. 

Harleian Miscellany, vol. ii. A Late Voyage to Holland, with brief 
Relations of the Transactions at the Hague : also Remarks on 
the Manners and Customs, Nature and Comical Humours of the 
People. . . . Written by an English Gentleman, attending the 
Court of the King of Great Britain. 1 6 9 1 . 

Vol. iii. A Relation of such things as were observed to happen 

in the journey of the Rt. Hon. Chas. Earl of Nottingham, Lord 
High Admiral of England, his Highness' s Ambassador to the 
King of Spain. By Robert Treswell, Esq., Somerset- 
Herald. 1605. 

Harrison, William. A Description of England in Holinshed's Chronicles, 
Ed. by L. Withington, with introduction by F. J. Furnivall. 
Camelot Series. (1876 ?) 

Hatfield MSS. Calendar of MSS. of the Most Hon. the Marquis of 
Salisbury, K.G., preserved at Hatfield House. 

Hentznerus, Paulus. Itinerarium Germanice, Gallia, Anglia, Italia, 
Norinbergas, 161 2. 

Herbert, Edward, Lord, of Cherbury. Satyra Secunda, of Travellers 
from Paris. To Ben Jonson. In Occasional Verses of 
Edward Lord Herbert, Baron of Cherbury. London, 1665. 

• Autobiography. Ed. Sidney Lee. London, 1907. 

214 



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Heylyn, Peter. A Full Relation of two Journeys; the one into the 
Mainland of France., the other into some of the adjacent Hands. 
London, 1656. 

France Painted to the Life by a Learned and Impartial Hand. 

The Second Edition. London, 1657. 

Hoby, Thomas. The Travels and Life of Sir Thomas Hoby. Written by 
Himself 1 547-1 564. Ed. Edgar Powell for Camden 
Society, Third Series, vol. iv. 1902. 

The Book of the Courtier. Introduction by Walter Raleigh in 

Tudor Translations. Ed. W. E. Henley. Vol. xxiii. 
London, 1900. 

Howard, James. The English Mounsieur. London, 1674. 

Howell, James. Epistolce Ho-Eliana. The Familiar Letters of James 
Howell Ed. J.Jacobs. 1892 (first edition 1645). 

J Survey of the Signorie of Venice., of her admired policy and method 

of government, . . . zvith a cohortation to all Christian Princes 
to resent her dangerous condition at present. London, 165 i , 

Information for Pilgrims unto the Holy Land, c. 1496. Ed. E, 
Gordon Duff. London, 1893. 

Jonson, Ben. Works. Ed. Gifford. 1 1 vols. 1875. 

La Noue, Francois de. Discours politiques et militahes. Basle, 1587. 

Leland, John. Commentarii de Scriptoribus Britannicis. Oxonii 
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Lemnius, Levinus. A Touchstone of Complexions. Englished by T. 
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Lewkenor, Samuel, Gentleman. A Discourse not altogether unprofitable 
nor unpleasant for such as are desirous to knozv the situation and 
customs offorralne cities without travelling to see them ; contain- 
ing a Discourse of all those Citties wherein doe flourish at this 
day priveleged Universities. London, 1600. 

Lloyd, David. State-Worthies. London, 1766. 

Locke, John . Life and Letters, with extracts from his journals and 
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Lismore Papers : Ed. A. B. Grosart. First Series, vol. v. ; Second 
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Lyly, John . Euphues and his Ephcebus, in Euphues ; The Jnatomy oj 
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Markham, Gervase. A Discourse of Horsemanshitpe. London, 1593. 

The Gentlemans Academie ; or The Booke of Saint Albans ; . . . 

reduced into a better method by G. M. London, 1595. 

Marston, John. Works. Ed. A. H. BuUen. London, 1887. 

Scourge of Villainie. London, 1598. 

Milton, John. Defensio secundapro Populo Anglicano, contra Akxandrum 
Moruni Ecclesiasten. Amstelodami, 1798. {Opera Omnia 
Latina.) 

Montfaucon, Bernard de. The Travels of the Learned Father Mont- 
fauconfrom Paris thro Italy (in 1698-9), Made English from 
the Paris Edition . London, 1 7 1 2 . 

Munday, Anthony. The English Romayne Life Written by A. Munday, 
sometime the Popes Sc hollar in the Seminar ie among them. 
London, 1590. 

Munster, Sebastian. Cosmographice universalis Libri VI. Basileae, 
1550. 

Nash, Thomas. Works. Ed. Grosart. 6 vols. 1883-5. 

The Unfortunate Traveller, or The Life of Jacke Wilton. London, 

1594. 
Negri, Cesare . Nuove Inventioni di Balli : Opera vaghissima di Cesare 

Negri Milanese detto il Trombone, famoso e eccellente Professore 

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North, The Hon. Roger. Lives of the Norths, together with the 
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Original Letters Illustrative of English History . . . from autographs in 
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Over bury. Sir Thomas. Sir Thomas Over bury, His Wife, with additions 
of New Newes, and divers mo7-e Characters (never before 
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216 



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Owen, Lewis. The Rtaining Register: Recording a True Relation 0/ 
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Pace, Richard. Richardi Pacei invictissimi regis anglia primarii secre- 
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Penn, William. Jn Account of W. Penn^s Travails in Holland and 
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Pilgrim-Book of the Ancient English Hospice attached to the 
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Pluvinel, Antoine. Le Maneige Royal ou Ion peut remarquer le defaut 
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Raymond, John. // Mercuric Italico, Communicating a Voyage made 
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217 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

Schottus, Franciscus. Itinerarii Italia Rer unique Romanarum libri 
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Sidney, Sir Philip. Correspondence with Hubert Languet, collected by 
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Smith, Richard. Sloane MS. 1813, containing the Journal of 
R. Smith, Gentleman, who accompanied Sir Edward 
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Spelman, William. A Dialogue or Confabulation between two travellers 
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Stanhope, Philip, Second Earl of Chesterfield. Letters to several 
celebrated Individuals of the time of Charles II., James //., 
William III. and Queen Anne, with some of their replies. 
London, 1829. 

State Papers, Domestic, 1547-80. Vols, xviii.-xx. passim, in the 
Public Record Office, London. (For correspondence of 
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Stow, John. A Survey of London. Reprinted from the text of 1603 
and edited by C. L. Kingsford. Oxford, 1908. 

Strype, John. Life of the Learned Sir Thomas Smith, Secretary of State 
of King Edward the. Sixth, and Queen Elizabeth. Oxford, 
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Annals of the Reformation. Oxford, 1824. 

Life of Edmund Grindal. Oxford, 1821. 

Life of Sir John Cheke. Oxford, 1821. 

Talbot MSS., in the College of Arms, London. Vol. P. fol. 57 K 
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Taylor, John. All the Works of John Taylor the Water Poet. Being 
Sixty -Three in number, collected into one volume by the Author. 
London, 1630. 

218 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

Temple, Sir William. Observations upon the United Provinces and the 
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Thomas, William. The Historie of Italie, a boke excedyng profitable to 
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1549. 

The Pilgrim^ A Dialogue on the Life and Actions of King 

Henry the Eighth. Ed. J. A. Froude. London, 1861. 

Warner, William. Pan his Syrinx, Compact of seven Reedes ; including 
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Weldon, Sir Anthony. The Court and Character of King James: 
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1857. 

Whetstone, George. A Remembrance of the wel imployed life and 
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Reprint of 1560 edition, edited by G. H. Mair for the 

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Wood, Anthony a. Athenee Oxonienses. Ed. Bliss. London, 1820. 

219 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 



III 

CRITICAL OR OTHER WORKS WHICH HAVE BEEN 
USEFUL IN THIS STUDY 

Addison, Joseph. Remarks on Several Parts of Italy . . . in ike years 
1701, 1702, 1703. London, 1705. 

A Letter from Italy to the Right Honourable Charles, Lord Halijax, 

by Mr Joseph Addison, 1701. Printed London, 1709, 

Andrich, I. A. De Natione Anglica et Scotia luristarum universitatis 
Patavince ab an. MCCXXII. P. Ch. N. usque ad an. 
MDCCXXXVIII. prasfatus est Blasius Brugi. Patavii 
excudebant fratres Gallina MDCCCXCII. 

Avenel, Le Vicomte G. D'. La Noblesse frangaise sous Richelieu. 
Paris, 1 90 1. 

Babeau, Albert. Les Voyageurs en France Depuis la Renaissance jusqu! a 
La Revolution. Paris, 1885. 

Bapst, Edmund. Deux Gentilshommes-Poetes de la Cour de Henry Fill. 
Paris, 1 89 1. 

Baretti, Joseph. An Account of the Manners and Customs oj Italy : 
with Observations on the mistakes of some travellers with regard 
to that country. London, 1768. 

An Appendix to the Account of Italy, in answer to Samuel Sharp, Esq • 

London, 1769. 

Bear-Leaders, The : or Modern Travelling stated in a proper Light, in a 
Letter to the Rt. Honorable the Earl of . . . London, 1758. 

Beckmann, Johann. Litteratur der alteren Reisebeschreibungen. Got- 
tingen, 1808, 

Physikalisch-okonomische Bibliothek vorinn von den neuesten 

Buchern, welche die Naturgeschichte, Naturlehre und die 
Land- und Stadtwirthschaft betrefFen, zuverlassige und vol- 
standige Nachrichten ertheilet warden, von Johann Beck- 
mann . . . ordentl. Profess, der okonomischen Wissen- 
schaften. 21 Band. Gottingen, 1802. 

Berchtold, Count Leopold. An Essay to direct and extend the Inquirie 
of Patriotic Travellers ; with further Observations on the Means 
of preserving the Life, Health, and Property of the inexperienced 
in their Journies by Land and Sea. Also a Series of Questions, 

220 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

interesting to Society and Humanity, necessary to be proposed for 
Solution to Men of all Ranks and Employments and of all Nations 
and Governments, comprising the most serious Points relative to 
the Objects of all Travels. London, 1789. 

Birch, Thomas. The Court and Times of James the First. London, 
1848. 

The Court and Times of Charles the First. London, 1848. 

Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth from 1581 till 1603, 

from the papers of Anthony Bacon, Esq. London, 1754. 

Life of Henry, Prince of Wales. London, 1760. 

BonnafFe, Edmund. Voyages et Voyageurs de la Renaissance. Paris, 
1895. 

Bourciez, Eduard. Les Masurs Polies et la Litterature de Cour sous 

Henri II. Paris, 1886. 
Burgon, J. W. Life and Times of Sir Thomas Greskam. London, 1839. 

Carte, Thomas. Life of James, Duke of Ormond. 6 vols. Oxford, 

1851. 
Congreve, William. Comedies. 2 vols. London, 1895. 

Coriat Junior (Sam Paterson, Bookseller). Another Traveller: or 
Cursory Remarks and Critical Observations made upon a Journey 
through Part of the Netherlands in the latter end of the Tear 
1766. 2 vols. London, 1767. 

Cust, Mrs Henry. Gentlemen Errant. London, 1909. 

Devereux, W. B. Lives and Letters of the Devereux, Earls of Essex. 
2 vols. London, 1853. 

Dodd, Charles. Church History of England from the Commencement of 
the Sixteenth Century to the Revolution in 1688. Ed. by 
Rev. M. A. Tierney. 4 vols. London, 1841. 

Einstein, Lewis. The Italian Renaissance in England. Columbia 
University Press, New York, 1902. 

Feuillerat, Albert. John Lyly. Cambridge University Press, Cam- 
bridge, 1 9 10. 

Fielding, Henry. Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon. Ed. by Austin 
Dobson. Chiswick Press, 1892. 

Foote, Samuel. Dramatic Works. 4 vols. London, 1783. 

Gibbon, Edward. Autobiography. Ed. by John Murray, with an 
introduction by the Earl of Sheffield. London, 1 896. 

221 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 

Gray, Thomas. Gray and His Friends ; Letters and Relics in great 
part hitherto unpublished. Ed. by D. C. Tovey. Cambridge 

University Press, Cambridge, 1890. 
Letters of Thomas Gray. Ed. by D. C. Tovey. 2 vols. 

London, 1900. 
Jocher, Christian Gottlieb. Gelehrten-Lexicon. Leipsig, Delmerhorst 

and Bremen, 1750-87. 
Jusserand, J. J. Les Sports et Jeux Wexercice dans Vancienne France. 

Paris, 1 90 1. 
Knight, Samuel. The Life ofDr John Colet. Oxford, 1823. 
Lodge, Edmund. Illustrations of British History. 3 vols. London, 

1791. 
Mathevs^, A. H. The Life of Sir Tobie Matthew, by his kinsman. 

London, 1907. 
Maugham, H. Neville. The Book of Italian Travel. London, 1903. 

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. Letters and Works. Ed. by her great- 
grandson Lord WharnclifFe, with additions by W. Moy 
Thomas. 2 vols, London, 1893. 

Nares, Edward. Memoirs of Lord Bur ghley. 3 vols. 183 i. 

Nicolas, Sir Harris. Memoirs of the Life and Times of Sir Christopher 
Hatton, K.G. London, 1847. 

Nolhac, Pierre De. Erasme en Italie. Paris, 1898. 

Nugent, Thomas. The Grand Tour. 4 vols. London, 1778. 

Physikalisch-okonomischer Bibliothek, XXI. Vide Beckmann, Johann. 

Pinkerton, John. Voyages and Travels. Vol. 17. London, 18 14. 

Poole, R., Doctor of Physick. A Journey from London to France and 
Holland; or the Traveller's Useful Vade Mecum. . . . 
Wherein is also occasionally contained many Moral Reflections 
and Useful Observations. London, 1746. 

The Beneficient Bee; or Traveller's Companion, containing Each 

Days Observations in a Voyage from London to Gibraltar . . . 
interspersed with many useful Observations and occasional 
Remarks. London, 1753. 

Rashdall, H. The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages. Oxford, 

1895. 
Rye, W. B. England as seen by Foreigners in the Days of Elizabeth and 

James the First. London, 1865. 

222 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 

Sauval, Henri. Histoire et Recherches des Antiqu'ites de la Vllle de Paris. 
Paris, 1724. 

Seebohm, Frederic. The Oxford Reformers. London, 1887. 

(Seward, William.) Anecdotes of Some Distinguished Persons, chiefly of 
the Present and ttvo Preceding Centuries. 5 vols, London, 
1796. 

Sharp, Samuel. Letters from Italy, describing the Customs and Manners 
of that Count ty in the years ij6^-\j66. To which is annexed, 
an Admonition to Gentlemen who pass the Alps in their Tour 
through Italy. London, 1767. 

A View of the Customs, Manners, Drama, etc., of Italy as they are 

described in The Frustra Letter aria ; and in the Account of 
Italy in English written by Mr Baretti ; compared zvith the 
Letters from Italy zvritien by Mr Sharp. London, 1768. 

Smith, Edward. Foreign Visitors in England. London, 1889. 

Smollett, Tobias. Works. Ed. W. E. Henley. London, 1899. 

Stanhope, Philip Dormer, Earl of Chesterfield. Letters to his Son. 
Published by Mrs Eugenia Stanhope from the originals now 
in her possession. 2 vols. London, 1774. 

Thicknesse, Philip. Observations on the Customs and Manners of the 
French Nation in a Series of Letters in which that Nation is 
vindicated from the Misrepresentations of some Late Writers. 
London, 1766. 

The Travellers. A Satire. London, 1778. 

Verney, Margaret. Memoirs of the Verney Family during the Common- 
wealth, 1 650- 1 660. Vol. iii. London, 1894. 

Voltaire (Fran9ois Marie Arouet). Lettres Philosophiques. Ed. by 
Gustave Lanson. Paris, 1909. 

Walpole, Horace, Fourth Earl of Orford. Letters. Ed. by Peter 
Cunningham. 9 vols. London, 189 1. 



223 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Academies, i 21-132; in France, 
1 2 1- 1 23 ; proposals for aca- 
demies in England, 123-126; 
objections to such academies, 
128-132 

Ac worth, George, 62 

Addison, Joseph, 181 

Advice to Travellers, 4-5, 205 ; 
Elizabethan, 2 1 ; characteristics 
of Renaissance books of, 28- 
32 ; admonitory side of, 55, 
88-98 ; for the country gentle- 
man, 148; guide-books of the 
1 8th century, 196, 200 

Agricola, Rudolf, 7 

Alps, the, 192, 200 

Ambassadors, training for, 12-16, 
43-47, 69 ; troubles of, 83-85, 

133 

Amorphus, in Cynthia's Revels, 

xii 
Amsterdam, 137 
Art "in Spain, 134; attention to 

in 17th century, 168-169 
Arundel, Earl of, see Howard 
Ascham, Roger, 16, 18, 42, 52, 

57, 65, 200 

Bacon, Lady Anne, 73-75 

Anthony, 73-75 

Francis, 36 note, 45 : Of 
Travel, 146 

Sir Nicholas, 123 
Barker, William, 62, 63 
Bear-Leaders, the, 188 
Beckct, Thomas k, 7 
Bedell, William, 76 
Bedford, Earl of, see Russell 
Bellay, Joachim Du, 16 
Bembo, Pietro, 16 



Berchtold, Leopold, Count, Essay 
to Direct and Extend the Inquiries 
of Patriotic Travellers, 195-198 

Berneville, Marie Catherine 
Jumelle de, Comtesse D'Aunoy, 

134 
Bethune, Maximilien de. Due de 

Sully, 115 
Blotz, Hugo, 41 
Bobadil, Captain, in Every Man 

in His Humour, 117 
Bodley, Sir Thomas, 37 
Boleyn, George, Viscount Roch- 

ford, 12, 15 
Boorde, Andrew, 14 
Borssele, Anne, Lady of Veer, 8 
Bothwell, Earl of, see Hepburn 
Bourdeille, Pierre de. Seigneur de 

Brantome, 117 
Bourne, William, Treasure for 

Travellers, 3 5 
Bowyer, Sir Henry, 1 1 3 
Boyle, Richard, First Earl of 

Cork, and his sons Robert and 

Francis, 158-167 
Brandon, Charles, Duke of Suf- 
folk, 15 
Brantome, see Bourdeille 
Bras-de-Fer, see La Noue 
Browne, Sir Thomas, 142, 193 

note; his son at Padua, 139 
Bryan, Sir Francis, 15 
Bucer, Martin, 17, 41 
Buckingham, Duke of, see Vil- 

liers 
Burghley, Lord, see Cecil 

Camden, Thomas, History of Eng- 
land, 1 4 
Carew, Sir Nicholas, 15 

227 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 



Carlton, Sir Dudley, 45 
Cavendish, Margaret, Duchess of 
Newcastle, 144 
William, Duke of Newcastle, 
104 
Cecil, Anne, Countess of Oxford, 
64, 66 
Robert, Earl of Salisbury, 

39, 76, 78, 150 

Thomas, Earl of Exeter, 40, 

57 note, 77, 145, 193 

note 

William, Baron of Burghley, 

18, 37, 39' 4O5 64-66, 73 

William, Lord Cranbourne, 

76, 160 
William, Lord Roos, 76-78, 
80 
Chamberlain, John, 45, 113 
Charles I., 114, 132 
Charles II., 104, 131, 178 
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 29 
Chesterfield, Earls of, see Stan- 
hope 
Chichester, Bishop of, see Mon- 
tague 
Clarendon, Earl of, see Hyde 
Clenardus, Nicolaus, 132 
Cleves, Charles Frederick, Duke 

of, 25 
Clothes, 68-70; French, 15, 50, 
51, X18, 179, 184, 189; 
Italian, 57, 67 
Colbert, Jean Baptiste, Marquis de 

Seignelay, 168 
Colet, John, 10 
Compostella, St James of, 3 
Cork, Earl of, see Boyle 
Cornwallis, Sir Charles, 83-85 
Coryat, Thomas, 20, 28 note, 200 
Cost, see Expense 
Cottington, Sir Francis, 83 
Cranbourne, Lord, see Cecil 

228 



Cranmer, George, 11, 17, 41 
Creswell, Joseph, Jesuit, 84 
Crichton, James, " The Admir- 
able," 48 
Curiosities, 138-139, 168 
Customs (^droit d'aubaine) in 
Spain, 133 

Dallington, Sir Robert, Method 
for Travell, 88-89, ^°8> ^^^' 
118, 155, 156; Survey of 
Tuscany^ 108, III; V'teiu of 
France, 108, 109 
Dancing, 1 13-1 15 
Dangers of Travel, 30, 47-49, 56, 

94-98, 198 
D'Aunoy, see Berneville 
Davison, Francis, 39-41, 146, 155 

William, 35, 154 
Delahaute, Antoine, 168 
T)e Peregr'inatione, 23, 29-32, 55 
Derby, Earl of, see Stanley 
Descartes, Rene, 137 
Deschamps, Eustache, 107 
Devereux, Robert, Second Earl 
of Essex, 35, 36, 42 
Robert, Third Earl of Essex, 

38 
Drake, Sir Francis, 27 
Dudley, Sir Robert, 102 
Dyer, Sir Edward, 21 

Education, 103-108; see also Aca- 
demies, Universities, Scholars, 
Ambassadors, Governors, Hu- 
manism 

Edward VI,, 16, 17 

Einstein, Lewis, Italian Renais- 
sance in England, 9 

Ellis, Sir Henry, 4 

Englishmen, their special reason 
for travelling, 22; peculiarities, 
120; Italianate, 55; pre- 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 



judices against foreigners, 67- 

69, 178-181 
Erasmus, Desiderius, 6, 8, 9 
Essex, Earls of, see Devereux 
Evelyn, John, 138, 141, 144, 157, 

169 
Expenses of travel, 66, 154-157 

Fairfax, Colonel Thomas, 152 

Faubert, Mons., 125 

Fencing, 117 

Ferrar, Nicholas, 140 

Fielding, Henry, 199 

Finch, Sir John, 139 

Fitzroy, Henry, Duke of Rich- 
mond, I 5 

Fleetwood, William, Recorder of 
London, 58, 62 

Flemming, Robert, 9 

Florio, John, Second Frutes, 21 

Flutter, Sir Fopling, 179 

Food, 48, iio-i 1 1 

Foote, Samuel, The Englishman in 
Paris, 180 

Forbes, James, 151-152 

Foreigners, English prejudice 
against, 67-71, 178-181 

Fox, Richard, Bishop of Win- 
chester, 10 

France, academies in, loi, I2I- 
I32; aifectations learned in, 
15>. 50> 5i» 179. 183-186; 
arbiter of fashion, Ii8, 119, 
141 ; gentlemen of, 105, 107, 
118, 119; attraction for tourists, 
102-103 ; loses some of its 
charm, 177 

Francis I., 14 

Free, John, 9 

Gailhard J., 167 
Gardiner, Stephen, Bishop of 
Winchester, 41 



George I., 190 

Gerbier, Balthazar, 124-125; 
Subsidium Peregrinantibus, 169 

Germans, energetic travellers, 22 ; 
Fynes Moryson's preference for, 
93 ; slow to learn languages, 
1 1 3 note 

Germany, attraction of, 17 ; 
women of, 40 ; manners of, 48, 
172; Ascham's Report of Ger- 
many, 200 

Gilbert, Sir Humphrey, 123 

Gloucester, Duke of, see Henry 

Governors, 24-25, 145-154, 167, 
170, 186-189 

Grand Tour, the. Origin of the 
term, 143-145 

Gray, Thomas, 191-192 

Greek, 7, 10, 18, 105 

Greene, Robert, 55, 70 ; Greene's 
Mourning Garment, 2 1 ; Quip for 
an Upstart Courtier, 70 

Greville, Fulke, Lord Brooke, 21, 

Grey, William, 9 

Grimani, Dominic, the Cardinal, 

9 
Grocyn, William, 10 
Grosvenor, Sir Thomas, 168 
Guide-books, see Advice to 

travellers 
Gunthorpe, John, 9 

Hall, Arthur, 57-62 

Edward, 15 

Joseph, 87, 98 
Harington, Sir John, 38, 39, 79 
Harrison, William, 68 
Harvey, Gabriel, 67 
Hatton, Sir Christopher, 21 
Henri IH., 113 
Henri IV., 109-1 lO 
Henry VI., 3 

229 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 



Henry VIII., 6, 7, 11, 13, 67, 

103 
Henry, Prince of Wales, son of 

James I., 38, 79 note, 114, 124 
Henry, Duke of Gloucester, son 

of Charles I., 131 
Hepburn, Francis Stewart, Earl of 

Bothwell, 102 
Hertford, Earl of, see Seymour 
Hoby, Sir Thomas, 16, 53-55, 62 
Holland, 136-139, 197 
Horace, 8, 27 
Howard, Thomas, Fourth Duke of 

Norfolk, 63 

Thomas, Second Earl of 
Arundel, 102 
Howell, James, 1 1 8- 1 20, 1 36, 1 56, 

192 ; Instructions for Forreine 

Travell, 108, 118-120, 132; 

Perambulations of Spain, 135 
Humanists, their sociability, 41, 43 
Humanism, 7 
Hyde, Edward, Earl of Clarendon, 

128, 135, 183-186; Dialogue 

of the Want of Respect Due to 

Age, 184 

// Cortegiano, 23 

Informacon for Pylgrymes unto the 

Holy Land, 4-5 
Inns, 30, 47, 48, 197-199 
Inquisition, j^-'jg passim 
Instructions for travellers, see 

Advice 
Insurance, 95 
Italianate Englishmen, 51-58 

passim, 62-63, 7° 
Italy, attraction of, 7-9, 11, 17, 

52> 54. 735 evils of, 49, 51, 

55, 101-102; universities of, 

7-9, 52-54 

Jaffa, port, 3, 5 
230 



James I., 114, 135, i 50 

Jerusalem, 6 

Jesuits, J ^-8^ passim 

Johnson, Samuel, 182 

Jones, Philip, 27 

Jonson, Ben, 1 50 ; Cynthia's 
Revels, xii ; Preface to Cory at' s 
Crudities, 20 ; Every Man 
out of his Humour, 95 note ; 
Volpone, or the Fox, 96-97 

Journals, 38-40, 196 

Jusserand, J. J., 130 

KiLLiGREW, Sir Thomas, 164-165 
Kinaston, Sir Francis, 124 
Kirchnerus, Hermannus, 28 ; 

Oration in Praise of Travel^ 

28, 30, 31, 201 

Langton, Thomas, Bishop of 

Winchester, 1 1 
Languages, 15-16, 73,112-113, 

190 
La Noue, Frangois de, 107 
Lassels, Richard, 145, 157; The 
Voyage oj Italy, 1 48-1 49, 194 
Latimer, William, 10 
Leicester's, the Earl of, son, see 

Dudley 
Leigh, Edward, 167 
Lewknor, Thomas, 100 
Licences for Travel, 86-87 
Lichefield, Edward, 79 
Lily, William, 10 

George, 1 1 
Linacre, Thomas, 10 
Lipsius, Justus, 26, 41, 42, 55 
Lister, Maitin, 139 
Locke, John, 137, 186-187 
Lodgings, with an ambassador, 

43-46 ; with a bookseller, 43 ; 

with a scholar, 41 ; in Spain, 

133-134; see also Inns 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 



Lorkin, Thomas, 122 

Louis XIII., 121, 126 

Louis XIV., 177 

Loysius, Georgius, Pervigilium 

Mercurii, 27-28 
Lupset, Thomas, 1 1 

Machiavelli, Niccolo, 23, 56 
Maidwell, Lewis, 126 
Mallerie, Melchisedech, 59-62 
Manners, Edward, Third Earl of 

Rutland, 37, 39, 63 
Manutius, Aldus, 9 
Mason, Sir John, 13 
Mathew, Sir Tobie, 86 note 
Meierus, Aibertus, Methodus de- 

scribendi regiones, 27 
Milton, John, 97, loi 
Misson, Maximilian, 194, 197 ; 

j1 Neiv Voyage to Italy ^ 194 
Mole, John, 77-79 
Montagu, Richard, Bishop of 

Chichester, 104 
Morison, Sir Richard, 1 1 
Moryson, Fynes, 20, 90; Pre- 
cepts for Travellers, 90-95 
Murder, 48, 198 note 

Nash, Thomas, 50 

Newcastle, Duchess and Earl of, 

see Cavendish 
Norfolk, Duke of, see Howard 
North, Dudley, Third Lord 

North, 48 
Nuove Inventioni di Balliy 1 1 4 

OsBORN, Francis, 143, 154 
Oxford, Earls of, see Vere 

Pace, Richard, 1 1 
Padua, Pole's household at, 11; 
University of, 52-55, 139, 140 



Palmer, Sir Thomas, " The 

Traveller," died 1626, 35 

Sir Thomas, died in Spain 

1605, 81 

Paris, life of Englishmen at, 174- 

176 ; medical students at, 139 ; 

see also France 
Passports, see Licences 
Paulet, Sir Amias, 44 
Peacham, Henry, 105, 132 
Peregrine, in Volpone, or the 

Foxy xii 
Peter Martyr, see Vermigli 
Pighius, Stephanus Vinandus, 25 
Pignatelli, 1 2 i 
Pilgrimages, 3-7 
Pirates, 47, 49 
Plague, 24 note, 49 
Plantin, Christophe, 25 
Plato, 31, 112 
Plessis, Armand du. Cardinal 

Richelieu, 121 
Pluvinel, Antoine, 121, 126, 128 
Pole, Reginald, Cardinal, 11-12 
Politian (Angelo Ambrogini), 15, 

72 
Politick-Would-Be in Volpone, 

or the Fox, xii, 96 
Pretender, the, 173 
Pugliano, John Pietro, 127 
Pyrckmair, Hilarious, 24-25 

Raleigh's, Sir Walter, son, 150 
Ramus, Peter, 26 
Reaux, Tallemant des, 115, 128 
Religion, changes in, due to 

travel, 51, 56, 72-73, 75-86 

passim, 88, 98 
Renaissance, enthusiasm for travel, 

sources of, 18, 201 ; quest of 

virtil, 29 
Richelieu, Cardinal and Due de, 

see Plessis 

231 



ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 



Riding, 1 20 ; the Great Horse, 
121, 1 26- J '^O passim, 142, 186 

Robbers, 30, 47, 90, 91, 133, 
198 

Rochford, Viscount, see Boleyn 

Rome, 25, 76, 86, 91, 94, 173 

Ronsard, Pierre de, 16 

Roos, Lord, see Cecil 

Russell, Edward, Third Earl of 
Bedford, 42 

Rutland, Earl of, see Manners 

St John's College, Cambridge, 
17, 18 

St Lieger, Sir Anthony, 12 

Salisbury, Earl of, see Cecil 

Scholars, 7-11, 17, 18, 41-43, 65 

Schottus, Franciscus, Itinerarium 
Italia, 193 

Seignelay, Marquis de, see Col- 
bert 

Selling, William, 10, 72 

Seymour, Edward, Earl of Hert- 
ford, 21, 41 

Shakespeare, William, Tivo 
Gentlemen of Verona, xii ; 
Taming of the Shreiv, 20 

Sharp, Sam, 198; Letters from 
Italy, 198 

Sickness, 24, 48, 160, 197, 199 

Sidney, Sir Philip, 35, 43, 46, 
127 
Robert, Earl of Leicester, 
41, 66, 154 

"Sights," 143, 193 

Smith, Richard, 40, 48 
Sir Thomas, 14, 46 

Smollett, Tobias, 199; Peregrine 
Pickle, 181 

Spain, gentlemen of, 119, 135; 
discomforts of, 132-136 

Stanhope, Philip, Second Earl of 
Chesterfield, 131-132,1 40 

232 



Philip Dormer, Third Earl 
of Chesterfield, 170-177, 
182-183 
Stanley, William, Ninth Earl of 

Derby, 151-153 
Starkey, Thomas, 1 1 
Stradling, Sir John, 26, 42 
Students, see Universities 
Sturmius, Joannes, 17, 65 
Sully, Due de, see Bethune 

Talbot, Gilbert, Seventh Earl of 
Shrewsbury, 21, 39, 63 

Taylor, John, The Water Poet, 
200 

Temple, Sir William, 137 

Tennis, 11 5-1 16 

Thomas, William, The Historie of 
Italie, 53 ; The Pilgrim, IIO 

Throgmorton, Michael, 11 

Tiptoft, John, Earl of Worces- 
ter, 9 

Transportation, 4-5, 54, 142, 
189, 197, 200 

Tunstall, Cuthbert, 10 

Turlerus, Hieronymus, 23, 24, 
26 ; De Peregrinatione, 23, 29- 
■^2 passim, 55 

Tutors, see Governors 

Ulysses, 27, 31 

Universities, of Italy, 7-9, 52-55, 
139; of Spain, 84, 85; of 
England, 53, 105, 170, 171, 

^75' i^3» 190 
Unton, Sir Edward, 40, 56 
Ursinus, Zacharias, 43 

Valladolid, conversions at, 81, 

84 
Veer, Lady of, see Borssele 
Venice, charm of, 52, 54, 55 ; 

clothes from, 50: inns at, 197 



OF THE RENAISSANCE 



Vere, Edward de, Seventeenth 

Earl of Oxford, 63-67 
Vermigli, John de, Twelfth Earl 
of Oxford, 4 
Peter, Martyr, 17 
Verney, Edmund, 131 
Villiers, George, Duke of Buck- 
ingham, 102, 114, 133 

Wallis, John, 129 

Walpole, Horace, Fourth Earl of 

Orford, 177, 19 1 -1 92 
Richard, Jesuit, 81, 84 
Walsingham, Sir Francis, 46 

Our Lady of, 7 
Wentworth, Thomas, Fourth 

BaroD Wentworth, 78-80 
Williamson, Sir Joseph, 147 
Wilson, Thomas, Arte of Rhetoric, 

24 



Windebanke, Sir Thomas, 145 
Wingfield, Sir Richard, 12 

Sir Robert, 12 
Winsor, Sir Edward, 49 
Winter, Thomas, 1 1 
Women, 28, 34» 55 
Wood, Anthony a, ix, 124 
Worde, Wynkin de, 4 
Wotton, Sir Edward, 10, 127 

Sir Henry, 41, 7B-80, 95- 

.98, 155 
Sir Nicholas, 1 2 

Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 1 2 

ZoucHE, Edward la, Eleventh 
Baron Zouche of Harring- 
worth, 38, 60, 87 

Zwingerus, Theodor, 24, 26 ; 
Methodus Apodemica, 24, 33 



VITA 

THE writer of this essay was born in 
Toronto, Canada. She received from 
Columbia University the degree of 
Bachelor of Arts in 1903, and the degree of 
Master of Arts in 1904. From 1908 to 1910 
she carried on research work in the field of 
English history and literature, at Oxford, 
England. Her graduate studies from 1910 
to 1913 at Columbia University were directed 
chiefly by Professor W. P. Trent, Professor 
A. H. Thorndike, and Professor G. P. Krapp. 
From 1904 to 1906 she was an assistant in 
English, and from 1906 to 1908 an instructor 
in English, at Wellesley College. From 1910 to 
1913 she was a lecturer in English at Barnard 
College, Columbia University. In 19 13 she 
was appointed Instructor in English at 
Barnard College, which position she now fills. 







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